Taking the ball short: a long read

You’re on championship ball, the biggest tournament of your life, you’ve never won a top-tier tournament before. The score is barely audible over the baying crowd. Your serve finds the side wall, you gain good court position, your opponent offers up a mid-court volley. What do you do?

You force them deep again, don’t you, maintain the pressure, encourage them to make the mistake? Maybe you hold, then hit cross court with pace, forcing them to turn again, recover again, cede position again. Or maybe you don’t.

World Championships Final 2019, Qatar. Footage from SquashTV.

Because you’re not like other players. Because you don’t play like they do. Your racket’s poised, the ball drops below your waist, and you feather in a cross court drop. Because you’re Tarek Momen. And in this moment, they can’t play like you do.

It was already Momen’s second drop shot of the rally, and he’d go on to hit one more before lifting the most coveted trophy in squash. A shot to bemuse, frustrate, appreciate. A strength and a weakness. In this piece, we take a closer look at the most distinctive tactic on the PSA World Tour: Tarek Momen’s drop shot.

In this piece, we show that:

Momen hits a high number of drop shots, but not the most on tour.
What distinguishes Momen is where he hits drop shots from: he hits drops from mid-court far more than anyone else.
Momen makes his drops count: over half his winners come from drop shots.
Risk comes with this reward, though: over two-thirds of Momen’s unforced errors come from attempted drop shots.
Momen hits a high number of winners in the late stages of matches. This is plausibly a result of the mileage his drop shots put into opponents’ legs.

An initial look

Tarek Momen plays the drop shot a lot: for every 100 shots he plays, he takes the ball short on 15.8 occasions. This is substantially more than most of his Top 10* counterparts. As a point of reference, fellow Cairo local Mostafa Asal takes it short just 7.8% of the time, while men’s #1 Mohamed ElShorbagy plays a drop once every 10 shots.

A trademark Tarek Momen flick

Somewhat surprisingly, however, Momen’s drop rate is not the highest on tour. World Champion Ali Farag comes in at 16.0 shots per 100, fractionally higher than the Viper. But it's Diego Elias who holds the drop shot crown, hitting over 18% of his shots short. In fact, Momen, Farag and Elias are in a league of their own compared with the rest of the men’s Top 10: nobody else comes within 4 percentage points.

Momen takes it short, but not as often as you might think. *A minimum of 5 and maximum of 15 matches analysed per player.*

Frequency of drop shot gives a decent indication of an individual’s playing style – it’s no surprise that defensive maestro Paul Coll and hard-hitting Mostafa Asal hit the fewest drops, while Momen and Elias, players renowned for their touch, score highly by this metric. But to get a better understanding of Momen’s short game, we need to compare where he and others are hitting their drop shots from.

Court regions as defined in our analysis

Regional differences

The most natural place to hit a drop shot from is from high up the court – being closer to the front wall reduces the chance of clipping the tin, while players stretching forwards for the ball may lack the stability to hit length. It’s no coincidence that the most common type of drop is the counter-drop, with players typically hitting a third of shots from advanced regions back to advanced regions.

Players counter-drop more on the backhand (~40%) than they do on the forehand (~30%). One exception to this trend is Ali Farag, who counter-drops on the forehand 45.2% of the time, while only doing so on the backhand every three shots. Notably, Fares Dessouky counter-drops well over 50% of the time on the backhand – take the Alexandrian into the front left and you’ll likely have to follow your shot in.

Fares Dessouky counter-drops on 57.5% of shots from the front left

Plotting the frequency with which players counter-drop is revealing: by this metric, Tarek Momen is no different to any other Top 10 player, coming in fourth most habitual backhand counter-dropper and fifth on the forehand.

A similar tale holds when comparing the number of times players take the ball in short from deep positions on court.

Diego Elias stands out this time, topping the charts for balls taken short from both the back left and back right. The Puma takes his prey short every 10 shots from deep backhands, and, remarkably, every 7 shots from deep forehands. The majority of these from the forehand graveyard are boasts to the front left.

Momen, meanwhile? The Egyptian clocks in at third for backhand drops from deep, but way down in sixth on the forehand. The Viper may be famed for his short game, but it’s not with counter-drops or drops from deep that he earns his reputation.

MOMEN IS THE ONLY PLAYER TO HIT A HIGHER PERCENTAGE OF DROPS FROM MID-COURT THAN ON THE COUNTER-DROP

Instead, what differentiates Momen from his Top 10 counterparts is the number of times he takes the ball in short from mid-court. On mid-court forehands, the Viper plays a drop every five shots (20.5%). Elias does so every 6 shots, Joel Makin every 9.

The Viper takes it short from mid right every 5 shots.

From mid-left, the stats are clearer still: Momen takes it short on a staggering 40% of shots. Nobody else comes close. Farag and Elias, completing the podium by this metric, are way down in the mid-20s. The Shorbagy brothers come in around 17% of shots; Asal and Makin in the mid-teens. In fact, Tarek Momen plays more drop shots on mid-court backhands than he does on the counter-drop, the only player to do so.

Momen is in a league of his own for number of drops from mid left.

These numbers are worth dwelling on. On backhand shots from mid-court, Momen plays a drop shot (39.7%) more than any other length (to mid 27.3%, to deep 33.0%). He plays a straight drop 30.7% of the time, almost twice as frequently as any other shot. You could ignore Momen’s cross court drops (9.0%) from mid-left, and he’d still take it short more than any other player from this region. Dubbed “back-to-front squash” by the SquashTV crew, Momen really does play it short as often as most players play it deep.

Momen takes it short from mid left more than he hits to any other length.

The stats above can be summarised in the following chart, comparing where Momen plays his drops from compared with the typical Top 10 player. The chart shows the difference between the aggregated drop shot profile of Top 10 players and that of Tarek Momen. As can be seen, Momen hits moderately more (Red) drops from deep left and moderately fewer (Blue) drops from deep right than the typical player, and hits marginally fewer counter-drops than average.

Red regions indicate where Momen hits more drop shots from than his rivals. Blue regions indicate where he hits fewer drops shots from than his rivals.

From mid-court, however, Momen is playing a different game. On the forehand, he drops from mid-court almost 60% more often than his rivals. On the backhand, he takes it short more than twice as often as the typical player.

Momen distinctively ‘feathers in’ a drop shot winner

Winning drops

Momen may take the ball short a lot – especially from mid-court – but does this tactic work? One way to examine this question from a statistical perspective is to chart the percentage of a player’s winners which are drop shots. Mohamed ElShorbagy, for instance, hits 40.7% of his winners as drop shots. For Ali Farag, this number is 46.0%. Mostafa Asal, by contrast, hits less than a third of his winners with drop shots (30.7%). Paul Coll uses the drop sparingly, but well: the Kiwi hits only 6.3% of shots as drop shots (lowest in the Top 10), but from this low start point hits 40.3% of his winners with drops.

Momen is the only top 10 player to hit over 50% of his winner with drop shots.

Momen’s tactics to take the ball short translate to point success too: the Viper hits over half of his winners with drop shots. A high number of winning drop shots is to be expected from someone who hits a high number of drops, but it is nonetheless revealing that he leapfrogs Elias and Farag in this regard.

Momen finds the straight nick with a drop shot winner

Risk vs Reward

He plays it often, and it brings him winners, but Momen’s drop shot is not without its downsides. Taking the ball short brings the tin into play in a way that hitting length does not; by dropping frequently, Momen invites a high error count. As shown in the chart below, the men’s Top 10 cluster fairly neatly into two types of error-makers: those who make a fairly high number of errors – roughly 2.5+ errors per Game – and those who make relatively few errors – at around 1.5 errors per Game. Momen falls into the high-error category at 2.5 errors per Game.

The men’s Top 10 appears to cluster fairly neatly into two categories of error maker: above and below 2 unforced errors per game.

As can expected, at the root of Momen’s high error rate is his keenness to take it short. Over two-thirds of the Viper’s unforced errors are committed on attempted drop-shots (70.7%), a dubious honour he shares with Ali Farag. This error rate comes in 12 percentage points higher than the typical men’s Top 10 player, for whom drop shot errors constitute 58% of unforced errors.

Only ElShorbagy and Elias make fewer than half their errors on drop shots.

Hidden benefits?

If the high number of winners are counterbalanced by the high number of errors, is there a separate, indirect benefit to Momen’s strategy?

Momen’s drop forces ElShorbagy to lunge, having moved from deep left to front right

The Viper’s tins from ambitious drops are frustrating to watch – and we remember them vividly. What we don’t bring to mind as readily are the countless times that Momen’s approach forced yet another harsh movement into the legs of a tiring opponent – but the advantages of these countless, smaller benefits are real. One reflection in the stats is in the number of late-match winners Momen hits compared with his rivals.

Drawing statistical conclusions from the latter stages of matches is tricky given how few Games 4 and 5 there are relative to Games 1, 2 and 3. But the data we do have hints that Momen’s tactic of dropping – putting mileage into the opposition’s legs – allows him to flourish the deeper a match goes. Although Momen hits a moderate 3.5 outright winners per game in the early stages of matches (5th in the Top 10), he hits a high 4.8 outright winners per game in the latter stages of matches, topping the charts in this metric. Add to that the fact that Momen wins over 70% of his Game 4s and Game 5s (2nd only on tour to Farag), and the accumulating toll that Momen’s drop shots take on an opponent over the course of a match becomes clearer.

Wrapping up

“I’m happy to have finally found my short game”, noted a relieved Momen during the 2021 World Championships. “It’s been a few months since I felt comfortable going in short”. As any player on an off-night knows, it’s easy to lose – or perhaps misplace – the touch required to take the ball in. It’s much more obvious when drop shots flick up off the tin than when length is missed to the back.

Momen catches the tin on an ‘ambitious’ drop shot

There are parallels here with other sports. Momen’s bold approach is similar in ways to pass-out-from-the-back football, ushered in with Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona. When the goalkeeper misplaces a pass to an opposition striker, the error is obvious for all to see, costly, embarrassing. But managers who demand this style of play know that, on balance, this approach results in more opportunities to score than it costs in opportunities conceded. The occasional high-profile howler is dwarfed by countless smaller benefits.

Momen is well aware of how tinning a drop ‘that wasn’t on’ looks. But it’s a calculated risk, with unforced errors readily factored into the equation. Going short, Momen knows every quiver contains a few duff arrows. For the Viper, the risk is worth the reward. It’s rather fitting that a drop shot took him to World Championship success.

Tarek Momen seals the 2019 World Championships with a drop shot

Eleven Tarek Momen matches from 2021 were analysed for the data pertaining to Momen in this blog:

Momen vs Farag, World Championships, SF, L (2-3)
Momen vs Marwan, World Championships, QF, W (3-1)
Momen vs Ibrahim, World Championships, R3, W (3-0)
Momen vs Soliman, World Championships, R2, W (3-1)
Momen vs Khan, World Championships, R1, W (3-1)
Momen vs Asal, World Tour Finals, SF, L (1-2)
Momen vs Makin, World Tour Finals, P, W (2-0)
Momen vs Coll, World Tour Finals, P, L (1-2)
Momen vs Coll, El Gouna, SF, L (0-3)
Momen vs Marche, El Gouna, QF, W (3-0)
Momen vs Dessouky, Black Ball Open, SF, L (0-3)

*Given his recent injury woes, we don’t have enough data on Top 10 player Karim Abdel Gawad to draw meaningful conclusions.