Forward Pressure & Finishing Ability Metrics
How you get ahead, and how you finish
Together, Forward Pressure and Finishing Ability correlate strongly with winning, and each one captures a different reason a team wins. They also generally track with DUPR rating differences between players.
It's common for the winning team to dominate just one of the two. For example, a team with low Forward Pressure but high Finishing Ability is often a counter-attacker: they don't drive the rally forward themselves, but when the opening comes, they close it out.
Forward Pressure (Ability to Press)
Forward Pressure measures how aggressively your team advances its position on every shot. The idea: each shot should gain ground, not just hold it. A team with high Forward Pressure is constantly pressing the rally toward its advantage instead of trading from a steady position.
A few ways to think about it:
Every shot moves the rally further in your favor, not just keeps you even.
Per-shot momentum: the rate you gain position, not how much position you already have.
How much each touch tips the state of the rally toward you.
It's a per-shot differential, so it rewards teams that improve their state on every touch, not teams that simply start from a good one. A player who's already at the kitchen but doesn't move the state forward will score low. A player constantly pushing the rally forward will score high.
Finishing Ability (Ability to Close)
Finishing Ability measures how decisively you close rallies out once you have the advantage. When you're ahead, you end the point instead of stalling.
A few ways to think about it:
Decisiveness when you're in front: you end the rally rather than extend it.
Conversion: you were ahead, did you close it or let them back in?
The opposite of sitting on a lead.
If two teams have the same Forward Pressure, one will spend more time in an advantage state than the other. The team that spent less extra time in advantage finished rallies faster when ahead, and that's Finishing Ability. Positive Finishing Ability means you don't waste advantage positions.
Technical Backing
Both 1-0 and correlated with the skill and with score differential:
