You’ve missed, but was it really an unforced error?

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You are playing Rafael Nadal. You have elicited a short ball, Nadal’s crosscourt backhand landing just past the service line. You line up the forehand approach shot. You’re well aware that Nadal is exceptionally fast. You also know that it’s often wise to aim approach shots down the line. But that means it will go to Nadal’s massive forehand. Then there’s the matter of Nadal’s presence and accomplishments and the likelihood that he’s probably won the vast majority of your matches—maybe even all of them. And let’s not forget the score and the opportunity created by your earlier shot. Chances to attack Nadal are not that frequent. As much as you have worked hard to stay present and simply hit the tennis ball, each of these factors occupy various regions of your brain.

With all that in mind, you hit what appears to be a makeable approach shot six inches long.

Your miscue will be tallied as an unforced error. The same will be the case should you miss a high volley versus the omnipresent Novak Djokovic, double-fault against power returner Iga Swiatek, net an incoming slice backhand, or shank a passing shot.

The Unforced Error: Not So Easy to Judge

But were any of these errors truly unforced? The premise of the unforced error is that the ability to execute the shot was completely in the player’s control: plenty of time and space. Rarely is a missed passing shot considered an unforced error. But mid-rally shots are. Should that be the case?

For surely, none of the shots cited in the examples above were missed in a vacuum. Is any?

“The psychological piece is so hard to evaluate,” says veteran coach Mark Kovacs. “It’s hard at the highest levels of the game to measure unforced errors.”

“It’s the worst statistic tennis has,” says Craig O’Shannessy, a longstanding strategist who has dissected thousands of matches. “Whether it’s forced or unforced is difficult to judge. Wimbledon, for example, has an opinion that players rarely make an unforced error. The forced error rate skyrockets compared to other Slams.”

That kind of disparity between tournaments threatens to erode not just the concept’s credibility, but its functionality.

As the examples versus Nadal, Djokovic and Swiatek prove, the presence of an opponent, armed with a particular set of skills and results, can create pressure and force an error. So might the situation, be it any stage in the ebb and flow of a match—those tight early games, a potential turning point, anything past 4-4. Toss in the rivalry’s history. If it’s your first match, that’s pressure. If you’ve never beaten someone, that’s pressure. If you’ve never lost to someone, that too is pressure. So might also one’s particular skill set, be it Roger Federer fielding a high ball to his backhand or you at the local park, trying to put away a high forehand volley. And isn’t the application of pressure precisely what forces errors?

“There are pressures everywhere—from your opponent, the scoreboard, the crowd, the wind, even the when the light is changing,” says Tennis Channel and ESPN analyst Pam Shriver.

Origins of the Term

The late Leo Levin created the term “unforced error” 40 years ago. In a 2018 New York Times article written by O’Shannessy, Levin defined an unforced error as “a situation [where] you are completely in control and you make the mistake.”

But Levin also agreed that there was considerable ambiguity in determining how that plays out. As he told O’Shannessy, “It gets complicated sometimes when you are looking at how hard was it hit, how much time did they have. The typical things we look for are pace of the previous shot, placement, both depth and angle, how far did the player have to run to get there, and also what direction was he going.”

Consider Levin a supreme artisan. A college-level player graced with exceptionally smooth strokes, Levin was the preeminent in-booth statistician for ESPN, CBS, NBC and others, as well as an analyst of such acumen that many world-class players relied on him for strategic insight. But as statistical measurement has blossomed into a worldwide business, dozens of arguably less-informed scorekeepers are charged with immediately assessing errors across thousands of rallies.

“It’s so subjective,” says Mike Gennette, the men’s and women’s coach at Cal Lutheran University. “Every shot applies pressure, especially the way the pros hit today.”

As Kovacs points out, the term was created in a different era. “At the time with wood racquets and first generation graphite racquets,” he says, “there was more time to determine what was forced and what was unforced.”

Limited Value for Coaches & Players

So while the unforced error might have entertainment value for tennis fans, its subjective nature and subsequent value makes it a highly limited tool for coaches.

Says Kovacs: “Of the coaches I deal with, none looks at unforced errors on the stat sheet. They’re looking at other statistics that are controllable.”

Rather than summon up a subjective tally, coaches prefer to zero in on specific points to review matters of shot selection and execution.

For many years, a common shorthand way to assess the quality of play has been to compare winners and unforced errors. One form of thinking believes that a 2:1 ratio of winners to unforced errors reveals that the player played an excellent match. But O’Shannessy’s belief is that the fear of committing an unforced error hurts young players, a binary distinction between not missing and hitting untouchable shots.

“They look at our sport as a game of perfection instead of one of errors,” he says. The mission should be to build skills and deploy aggression appropriately enough to elicit errors.

There might be other ways to bring more nuance to match analysis. Levin pondered the idea of an “aggressive ratio,” which would tally up a player’s winners and the errors he forced. The match summaries created by SMT, the company Levin worked for that tracks data at the Australian Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open, provide this information.

In the 2022 US Open final, for example, the victorious Carlos Alcaraz won 127 points versus Casper Ruud—55 with winners, 43 by generating forced errors, 29 by Ruud’s unforced errors. For what it’s worth, Alcaraz had 12 more unforced errors than Ruud.

Two Players, Joined Together

Applying this to recreational tennis life, the case can be made that it’s impossible to determine the difference between a forced and unforced error. Are they a function of circumstance? Skill?

Take this theoretical example of a match between two 4.5 players: Bob carves a slice backhand, short and low to Steve’s forehand. Steve has plenty of time to hit the ball with his semi-Western grip, but lines it into the net.

Steve also has a full-time job, three kids and is on a tennis court no more than six hours a week. Just how sound is Steve’s forehand technique anyway? Did he really make an unforced error? Why not credit Bob for extracting it from him? Add to the mix the fact that Steve has never beaten Bob and he made that mistake at 3-3 in the third set.

Says O’Shannessy: “The number one thing a player is striving to do in a point is to make them miss by making the opponent uncomfortable. And what’s a tough shot for one player is an easy shot for another.”

Tempting as it is to think tennis is an individual sport, each person strictly in control of his ability to miss or make, that’s not accurate. It’s a relationship game; two people, joined together in a dance of disruption.