Have you ever wondered what it takes not only to be a great tennis player but also to win a Grand Slam title? To be a great tennis player, do you have to be able to smash the ball harder than your opponent? Andy Murray won the 2012 US Open, and he can hit the ball at 145 miles per hour. Is serving aces the key to success? Roger Federer hit 50 aces against Andy Roddick to win the 2009 Wimbledon final. (This is the record for a Grand Slam final, but not a Wimbledon record: in 2010, in the first round, John Isner hit 113 aces against Nicolas Mahut - and Mahut himself hit 103 aces against Isner. The totals are explained by the fact that theirs is the longest match on record, lasting 11 hours and 5 minutes over three days of play and 183 games.) We wanted to find the qualities that make for - and ideally that predict - Grand Slam winners. And to test our conclusions, we wanted to see if they were worth betting on. Were they good enough to win us money?
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