Chapter 5 Conclusions and Suggestions
Section 1 concludes the results to explain how the tennis skills and mental toughness associate with winning opportunities, compare the performance difference between talent players and less talent players, and find out how a major win can affect players career. Then section 2 describes the limitation of this study and makes suggestions to further research.
5.1 Conclusions
The results of the regression models reject the null Hypothesis 1. The regressions results indicate that most of the tennis skills and mental toughness are positively significantly
associated with the winning percentage in both ATP and Grand Slam levels, except serving ace. The results reveal that tennis skills are as important as mental toughness for players to gain more winning percentage, which implies that pro tennis matches are highly competitive.
The regressions and ANOVA testing results reject null Hypothesis 2 either. The results of the regression models show that the most talent players have the best performance, while the least talent players have the worst performance, except FSER.
Null Hypothesis 3 ATP model is rejected by the regression results. The ATP model shows that players do improve their skills after winning the first ATP title. ANOVA testing also indicates that most of the skills significantly improve in after subset, except FSER.
Moreover, 2 subsets (before and after) regression results denote that both BPW and BPS show positively significantly in after subset. However, the Grand Slam title model reveals that the coefficient of FGS dummy shows a negative significantly association with winning percentage, and the testing of ANOVA also indicates that most of the variables do not change significantly, while rest of the significantly changed variables become worse. Therefore, the study reject null Hypothesis of GS title model that there is no significant change after
winning the first Grand Slam title. Although the coefficients for winning the first title in ATP
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and GS are significant, however they are in opposite directions. Accordingly, ATP models do suggest that mental toughness plays an important part after winning the first ATP title;
therefore a major win does enhance a player’s confidence. On the other hand, by winning the first GS title, players become more stress and locked by all opponents, which might make him less confidence instead.
5.2 Suggestions and Limitations
This study implies that current male pro tennis players are in a really competitive environment. Beside tennis offensive and defensive skills, mental toughness plays a major role for players. Therefore, to be a top player in professional tennis tour, not only needs to solid his basic tennis skills but also has to find a way to strengthen his psychology toughness
Professional tennis matches have a long history, but the data used in this study only covers 10 years of them. Meanwhile, data of Grand Slam matches only preserved for one year in their official sites. By the way, limit data for winning junior GS title limit the
definition of “a talent player.” Furthermore, the winning percentage ignores the weight of the levels of tournament and the rank between the players, which might not truthfully represent a player’s wining opportunities. Due to these facts, the data might limit the research
explanations.
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