Paul Coll: Thirteen thousand shots
Paul Coll combines supreme fitness with low risk squash to great effect. A permanent fixture at squash’s highest table, he is the only men’s top 6 player not to have cut his teeth on the courts of Cairo or Alexandria. In this blog, we analyse one aspect of his game that has made him the only New Zealander in a generation to reach the men’s top four: the relentless depth of his hitting.
Data source: All 9 of Paul Coll’s BO5 matches October-December 2020 available on SquashTV.
12,737 shots. 717 points. 37 games. 9 matches. 6 top-20 opponents. 6 wins. 3 tournaments. 1 final. 1 left-hander.
We tag each shot for: distance from side wall, distance from back wall, whether it was a volley or groundstroke, played soft or hard, played on the rebound from the back wall or not, played as a boast or not, and played cross court or down the line. You can always have more data, but we think ~13,000 shots, comprising ~100,000 data points, is heading towards a statistically robust analysis of Coll’s game.
In this piece, we show how:
Coll hits to deep more than his opponents, but it’s his consecutive shots to deep that stand him apart
Coll hits half of shots from mid-court to deep, and takes it short just 1 in 10
Coll lifts on the backhand to both corners, but lifts on the forehand overwhelmingly to the back left
Coll is reluctant to end exchanges in the back left, but is proactive in moving back right exchanges to the back left
High-percentage squash
Coll is in his element when hitting low risk shots to the back of the court. Not many have the patience for 5-minute rallies, and the Kiwi’s remarkable fitness levels means he’s never the first to tire. Rallies involving Paul Coll tend to last 17.8 shots (mean), 4 shots higher than the men’s tour average, while his average match duration is high at just under one hour. Turning each match into a marathon requires ‘high-percentage’ squash: shots which are unlikely to result in errors, and shots which limit the opponent’s options to attack. An integral part of such a game plan requires consistently hitting shots deep, making it harder for the opposition to take the ball in short aggressively.
Intercept regions as defined in our analysis
An initial analysis
Coll hits to deep a lot: 58.8% of the Kiwi’s shots are returned by his opponent from behind the service boxes. His opponents make him return from deep on only 52.6% of shots, over 6 percentage points less. This gap grows when considering shots played to deep from deep positions, the bread and butter of Coll’s game: Coll hits 69.1% of his shots from deep areas back to deep areas, 8 percentage points up on his opponents (60.9%).
Coll hits 3 of every 5 shots to the back. As a point of contrast, Coll will take the ball short once every 11.5 shots, while his opponents take the ball in every 9.6 shots.
The relentlessness of Coll’s shots to deep is remarkable: wave after wave of back-court pressure. One way to quantify this is to look not just at shots to deep, but at consecutive shots to deep played by one player. In his past nine matches (5,965 non-serve shots), Coll hit 2,282 pairs of shots to the back. His opponents hit to the back consecutively on just 1,768 occasions.
Coll hits more frequently to the back than his opponents, and hits to the back on consecutive shots 30% more often than his opponents
Extending this idea to three consecutive shots to the back is more revealing still. In late 2020, Coll hit 1,427 ‘three-in-a-row’ shots to the back of the court, compared with his opponents’ 936. Coll played twice as many ‘five-in-a-row’ shots to deep (570) than his opponents (274), and three times as many eight-consecutive shots to deep than his opponents. One shot to deep might give you one-off good court position, but eight consecutive shots to deep breaks your opponent.
Coll not only hits to the back, he hits to the back relentlessly consistently
Coll’s consecutive shots to deep when baselined against his opponents’ shots to deep highlights this consistency in his game
One analytical step further: specific areas of the court
The counterpart to consecutive shots to the back is opting to ‘end the exchange’. At Cross Court, we deem 4 consecutive shots (2 by each player) to the same region of the court an ‘exchange’, with deep exchanges on the backhand most pertinent to Coll’s game. In the analysis period, Coll opted to end backhand graveyard exchanges on 165 occasions – by playing a shot to a different region of the court. His opponents opted to end the same exchanges 25% more regularly, on 205 occasions.
Interestingly, Coll opted to end exchanges from the forehand graveyard on 30 occasions, twice as frequently as his opponents (18). This proactive approach is indicative: Coll’s game plan involves not only keeping the ball deep, but specifically deep on the backhand.
Coll is reluctant to end an exchange from the backhand graveyard, but readily does so on the forehand
Coll’s use of shots to deep becomes more apparent still when considering shots from mid-court. Serves excluded, Coll hits half (49.3%) of his shots from mid-court to the back. His opponents, by contrast, typically hit just a third (36.6%) of their mid-court shots deep. From the same mid-court region, Coll will only take it short once every eight shots (12.4%), fewer than his opponents’ decision to take mid-court balls in short every six shots (17.0%).
Coll hits half of his shots from mid-court to deep, and 1 in 10 to the front
Dividing the court into further segments allows more nuanced analysis of forehand and backhand. As depicted in the charts below, Coll hits one in three of his backhand mid-court shots to the backhand graveyard. Coll uses this option much more frequently than his opponents, who typically hit to the backhand graveyard every fifth shot from the backhand mid-court.
When looking at the mirror image shot (shots played to forehand graveyard), Coll and his opponents are barely distinguishable. Both hit shots to this region from different court positions with remarkable similarity, further indication of Coll’s desire not only to move the rally to the back but specifically to the back left.
Another analytical step: shot type
To paint a full picture of Coll’s shots to deep, we need to consider shot type in addition to shot location. One such analysis shows that Coll lifts from the front corners to the back more frequently than his opponents. Such a shot is typical of a player wishing to extricate themselves from a front-court shoot out and reset the rally from the back.
Of the 664 shots Coll hit from advanced regions in his past 9 matches, he hit 143 lifts – once every five front court shots (21.5%). His opponents, though, perhaps sensing the chance to bring Coll out of his backcourt comfort zone, chose to lift less regularly, on just 15.0% of occasions (or on roughly one in seven front court shots).
It’s interesting, too, to note where Coll plays his lifts to. In the analysis period, Coll hit 95 lifts from the front left. Of these, he hit 50 down the line and 45 cross court. His lifts from the front right, however, tell a different story, Coll hitting 37 cross court and just 11 down the line in the same time period. In other words, it’s hard to predict where Coll will lift to from the front left, hitting half of lifts to the back left and half to the back right. But once Coll is attempting a forehand lift, it’s very likely you’ll be retrieving on the backhand.
Another shot-type to consider is volleys. Both Coll and his opponents hit one in three forehand volleys to deep locations. A difference emerges on the backhand, though. While his opponents only hit 27.8% of their backhand volleys to deep, Coll hit an enormous 41.1% of his backhand volleys to deep, underscoring how relentless Coll is in forcing his opponent to the back.
Coll hits significantly more backhand volleys to deep than his opponents
A marked presence of cross court shots
One element of Coll’s game we found surprising was his keenness to hit cross court. Defensive players such as Coll tend to hit the ball down the line, allowing the wall to impact the opponent’s swing and removing angles from which to attack. However, in his past 9 matches, Coll hit just as many cross courts as his opponents – once every three shots – a level consistent with tour average.
The numbers remain constant with more nuanced court area analysis: as shown below, Coll and his opponents both hit one in four shots cross court from deep positions, and a shade over 40% of shots cross court from mid-court positions. The biggest difference emerges when comparing the number of mid-court volleys hit cross court to deep positions, but even this difference is small: Coll hits one in five mid-court volleys to deep with a cross court, while his opponents do this every six occasions.
Coll and his opponents hit similar number of cross courts
Coll hits the ball to the back a lot. We knew this, but putting numbers on different aspects of this approach sharpens the picture and allows robust comparison with his opponents. Of particular note is Coll’s ability to hit consecutively to deep, an area of his game in which he leaves opponents in his wake. His consistency in finding the backhand graveyard with backhand volleys outstrips his opposition, and his desire to reset rallies into the back left corner from mid and deep positions on the forehand – also his go-to option with lifts from the front right – underscores the discipline and skill of this top performer.
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List of matches analysed:
Coll vs Asal, Black Ball Open, R2, L (2-3)
Coll vs Crouin, Black Ball Open, R1, W (3-0)
Coll vs Farag, Qatar Classic, F, L (1-3)
Coll vs Dessouky, Qatar Classic, SF, W (3-0)
Coll vs Marwan, Qatar Classic, QF, W (3-2)
Coll vs Marche, Qatar Classic, R3, W (3-2)
Coll vs Masotti, Qatar Classic, R2, W (3-0)
Coll vs Asal, Egyptian Open, QF, L (2-3)
Coll vs Ibrahim, Egyptian Open, R3, W (3-0)