Rafael Nadal officially opened the Rafa Nadal Academy by Movistar in his hometown, Manacor, Mallorca, on Wednesday. The high-performance centre combines tennis and education, so that students can continue their pathway to professional tennis without having to neglect their academic studies.

“My future is here,” said Nadal. “I don’t imagine myself living away from Mallorca. The sport is my passion and creating this tennis academy is the most important part. You can also play lots of different sports here. I believe this is a centre that kids need. I will be very involved.

“There is also an international school, which is important to maintain the academic schedule. The team of coaches here [directed by Toni Nadal] have a lot of experience in our professional sport and, also, the knowledge to teach the kids that train at the academy. I’d like to make this a centre of tennis for everyone around the world.”

The Rafa Nadal Academy by Movistar is equipped with the latest technology, including supervised residency exclusively for students, an American International School for children aged 10 to 18 years of age, and a clinic specialising in sports medicine, physiotherapy and nutrition. There are also 26 indoor and outdoor tennis courts, a fitness centre, two swimming pools (indoor and outdoor), mini-football pitches, three regulation multi-sport courts, 10 paddle tennis courts, a restaurant and café bar, pro shop and gardens.

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“I don’t know how many players of Rafa’s calibre have an academy,” said Roger Federer, who was a special guest at the launch. “I see his D.N.A. all around, and that’s an incredible bonus. It’s a special place. His work ethic is right up there at the top, and he’ll be able to share his experiences. It’s very exciting… I’m proud to have been here today.”

ATP Executive Chairman & President Chris Kermode also attended the event alongside ITF President David Haggerty, Wimbledon Chairman Phillip Brook, David Brewer, Director, Pro Circuit and US Open Referee; and José María Álvarez-Pallete, Chairman & CEO of Telefónica.

Kermode said, “I’d like to congratulate Rafa and all those involved on this special day for the opening of the Rafa Nadal Academy. The facility is truly impressive, and it’s been an honour to be invited here for this landmark occasion. Rafa has an incredible passion for our sport, and this Academy is a further reflection of that. On behalf of the ATP, I’d like to wish the Academy the very best for a successful future.”

The 24,000-square metres academy, which opened its doors in June, brings 140 additional jobs to Manacor.

Power tennis was on display at the If Stockholm Open on Wednesday, as Juan Martin del Potro downed No. 7 seed John Isner 6-4, 7-6(6) in first-round action. The Argentine wild card scored his first win in three trips to Stockholm.

“I’ve been here twice in the past and did not win a match. Hopefully this is a good sign for me to go far this week,” del Potro said. “I’m very happy to have a chance to come back here and to be able to show my best tennis.

“Isner has a difficult game to play against. In the second set, I was lucky in the tie-break to take the chance to win the match.”

Isner came into the match with an ATP World Tour-leading 982 aces and added 15 to his tally against del Potro, but the 6’10” American dropped serve to lose the first set and succumbed in 89 minutes. Del Potro fired nine aces and did not face a break point in improving his FedEx ATP Head2Head record against Isner to 5-2. He will next face Nicolas Almagro.

Big-serving Ivo Karlovic defeated Swedish teen Mikael Ymer 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the second round. The No. 3 seed was in danger of being upset by the 18 year old, currently No. 549 in the Emirates ATP Rankings, but saved all three break points faced after dropping the opening set. The Croatian struck 16 aces and won 90 per cent of first-serve points to advance in under two hours.

#NextGen star Alexander Zverev beat Adrian Mannarino 7-5, 6-4. The 19 year old, who recently cracked the Top 20 of the Emirates ATP Rankings, hit seven aces and broke serve three times against the French left-hander.

Sixth seed and last year’s finalist Jack Sock notched his 30th match win of 2016 to edge Malek Jaziri 3-6, 6-3, 7-6(5) for a place in the second round against Dustin Brown.

Jurgen Zopp, who qualified for his first ATP World Tour tournament of the year, recorded his first tour-level match win since 2012 when he knocked out Benjamin Becker 6-3, 6-4.

Doubles Seeds Advance

Rohan Bopanna and Treat Huey, seeded second, downed Marcos Baghdatis and Gilles Muller 7-6(6), 6-3 in their opening match, while No. 4 seeds Mate Pavic and Michael Venus beat Ken Skupski and Neal Skupski 7-6(5), 6-4. Both teams will face all-Swedish duos in the quarterfinals. Bopanna/Huey will take on Johan Brunstrom and Andreas Siljestrom, while Pavic/Venus will play wild cards Isak Arvidsson and Fred Simonsson.

Fourth seed Pablo Cuevas struck 11 aces to move past qualifier Jozef Kovalik 6-4, 7-6(4) on Wednesday and reach the European Open quarter-finals in Antwerp. He will meet Diego Schwartzman or #NextGen star Taylor Fritz, who won 80 per cent of his first-serve points and came back to beat German wild card Joris De Loore 3-6, 6-4, 6-4.

Third seed Richard Gasquet lost only two first-serve points (24/26) to beat Spaniard Inigo Cervantes 6-2, 6-4.

Fifth seed Gilles Simon, who reached last week’s Shanghai Rolex Masters semi-finals, converted five of six break points in a 6-3, 6-2 victory against German qualifier Yannick Maden. It was Simon’s 30th match win of the year. The Frenchman will face another German in round two, Jan-Lennard Struff.

Top doubles seeds Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut needed only 52 minutes to prevail against Guillermo Garcia-Lopez and Nenad Zimonjic 6-0, 6-3. Herbert/Mahut are looking to gather momentum heading into the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, to be held 13-20 November at The O2 in London. The Frenchman will be playing at the year-end championships for the second consecutive year.

View The Emirates ATP Doubles Race To London Standings

Gregoire Barrere, Mitchell Krueger, Omar Jasika and Daniil Medvedev feature in the second edition of the Young Guns Contest, which is part of Tecnifibre’s On The Road to the ATP World Tour programme.

The four young players, who are attempting to rise up the Emirates ATP Rankings in 2016, will compete for a $50,000 prize based on their on-court results and also their ability to share their lives on social media.

After a year spent fighting for supremacy on court and on social media, here is how the Young Guns have performed:

He’s played only two ATP World Tour matches but 18-year-old Mikael Ymer has already swept a former Top 10 player. The Swedish wild card dismissed Spaniard Fernando Verdasco 6-2, 6-1 on Tuesday, needing only 70 minutes to eliminate the left-hander from the If Stockholm Open.

Ymer impressed the Swedish crowd with poise of a more experienced, higher-ranked player, not what they might have expected from the World No. 549 who made his ATP World Tour debut a year ago in Stockholm (l. to A. Zverev). The right-hander saved all three break points faced and broke Verdasco for the fifth time to clinch the match, his first ATP World Tour victory. Ymer will have a tall task in round two. He faces 6’11” Ivo Karlovic, the third seed.

Ymer’s older brother, 20-year-old Elias Ymer, a member of the ATP Next Generation, was less fortunate. He fell to German qualifier Tobias Kamke 6-4, 6-0 after 65 minutes.

Spaniard Nicolas Almagro, another former Top 10 player, delivered 17 aces in a 3-6, 7-6(1), 6-3 comeback victory against Japanese Yuichi Sugita. Almagro saved seven of eight break points in the two-hour, 18-minute match and will next face John Isner or Juan Martin del Potro.

German Dustin Brown also came back to win, advancing past Gilles Muller 4-6, 6-3, 6-3. Brown will next meet Malek Jaziri of Tunisia or American Jack Sock, the sixth seed.

More than a million points of research. Every Top 100 player. It turns out that player development evolves from playing more points on serve to playing more points returning the further up the Emirates ATP Rankings you climb.

An Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers analysis reveals a hidden element of our sport we have never fully grasped. The majority of the points you want to play are not on your own serve. You want your opponents to go deeper into their service games, where your chances of breaking serve steadily increase. You want to keep your own service games short and sweet.

The Infosys Information Platform uncovered that every single player in the Top 10 has played more return points than serve points since the beginning of the 2015 season. This massive data set is from the past 20 months and contains 1,143,932 points.

See the ATP Stats LEADERBOARDS powered by the Infosys Information Platform

Roger Federer led the pack, playing 52.6 per cent of his points returning. Second was World No. 1 Novak Djokovic at 52 per cent. They were the only two players in the Top 100 who reached the 52 per cent mark. The entire data set of 100 players scored in a four percentage point range, from around 48 per cent to 52 per cent.

Top 10 Breakdown: Percentage of Return vs. Serve Points

Dominic Thiem was the third ranked player in the Top 10 in this specific category. The 23-year-old Austrian moved from outside the Top 50 in the Emirates ATP Rankings in early 2015 into the Top 10 in June of this year.

Interestingly, World No. 3 Stan Wawrinka had the lowest rating of any player in the Top 10, playing just 50.1 per cent of points returning serve.

The further down the Top 100 list you move, the more you uncover players who play more points on their own serve, battling harder to hold serve, and not pressuring as much on their opponent’s service games.

Top 100 Breakdown: Percentage of Return vs. Serve Points

Overall, 58 per cent of the Top 100 play more points returning than serving. But there is a clear disparity between the Top 50 and the bottom 50. Seventy two percent of the top half play more return points than serve points, and that elevates to 90 per cent within Top 20. But the metrics are clearly different in the bottom half of the Top 100, with only 44 per cent of players playing more points on return.

Playing more points returning is something that higher ranked players achieve, but it’s also something that more experienced players seem to understand as well. When you look at the youth in the Top 100, there is an overwhelming majority of them who still play more points on serve.

For example, the only two players in the Top 20 who play more points serving than returning are the two youngest, 21 year old Nick Kyrgios and 22 year old Lucas Pouille. Bernard Tomic, Alexander Zverev, Kyle Edmund, Taylor Fritz and Jared Donaldson are young players in the Top 100 who are in the transition zone of trying to play more points on return than on their own serve.

Becoming more efficient on your own serve and making your opponent work harder on his serve makes perfect sense, and now we have the data to tie it to player development and your position in the Top 100 on tour.