Charting Soderling / Nadal

[airforce1]

Thanks for sending me the vid of the last 2 sets and part of the second set.

I charted the partial set and it was remarkably even up to 6-6.
Remember I only had a partial vid on this, the second set and it
picked up at 4-3.

each guy had about 4 Rally UE's, offset by 4 rally FE/winners
Serving and Return numbers didn't separate them either, as they fell very close there as well. Neither won many points off serves or returns.

each player had about 2 more FE/winners, than they had UE's when points end during mid court ball attacks.
The difference here was that Soderling attacked about 4 times as often in what I had of the 2ond set, but was only a plus 2 due to 5 UEs in the attacking phase.

The tiebreaker made the big difference. Robin made 2 UE's from the baseline rallys and 4 more on midcourt attacks sequences to hand the set to Rafa on a platter. Rafa got a net cord roll over winner to round out his 7 points.
Soderling was only able to Force one error from Rafa and receive one UE to total his 2 points and lose 7-2.

75% conversion rate seems to be a magic # for mid court attack sequences and if Sod had hit this % in the tiebreaker (3 of 4 in this case) he would have been ahead in the tiebreaker 5-4 instead of losing it quickly. This is evidence of the importance of efficiency in mid ct ball attack sequences.

more to come...

[airforce1]

3rd set

Important 3rd set

Decided to also break it down by whether it was a svc or rtn game as well.
The interesting thing is that Robin had 6 rally UEs when returning, but only 1 on his svc games.
He also had 15 mid ct ball attack seq when serving, but only 3 when returning.
Illustrates how important this is for him to hold.
**Important thing here is that one of these 3 rtn mid ct attacks led to the break point conversion where he forced the error (FE) by Nadal

for the set
Rafa -- 4 rally UEs to 4 winners & FEs = net 0
Robin-- 7 rally UEs to 3 winners & FEs = minus 4

Rafa-- 0 mid ct attack UEs to 4 winners & FEs = plus 4
Robin-- 5 mid ct attack UEs to 13 winners & FEs = plus 8

Rafa was a plus 5 serving and a plus 0 on Rtns
Robin was a plus 3 serving and a plus 1 on Rtns

You can see that Soderling attacked mid ct balls more than 4 times as often as Rafa and also converted about 73%. (close to 75%) (much like Fed at Madrid and Wimbledon except Fed's conversion rate was lower at the Wimby loss)
Robin probably actually went over 75%, but the 4th game was missing from the vid, where Soderling held at love.
I'm betting that he converted a couple of short ball attacks in the game and clearly had no UE's as he held at love.
Rafa was 100% on conversion, but 4 attacks was just not enough and they were all on his svc games, with none in rtn games, unless he blew a couple in that one missing love hold by soderling.

Critical aspects of the crucial Svc break game by Soderling.
2 Rally UEs by Nadal and
1 mid ct attack by Soderling where he forced the Nadal error (FE)

more to come on the 4th set
but I did skip ahead and preview the breaker where
Nadal tossed in 2 rally UEs and 3 mid ct attack UEs = 5 UEs
Soderling only made 1 rally UE and 0 mid ct attack UEs

Rafa was able to force 1 error on the rally, but
Soderling won 2 off mid ct attack sequences

[uspta990770809]

So the key is the conversion rate?

When these guys at the top of the game "play well", they don't make unforced errors. It seems your hypothesis is that these matches, assuming both players "show up", comes down to how well they play the midcourt attack points: how often do they attack and how often they offer that opportunity to their opponents and whether or not they achieve that 75% conversion rate.

This makes great sense to me. Serving and volleying is dead. If they are not going to make unforced errors (certainly Federer and Nadal when they are playing well), the only place they really take chances is in their midcourt play.

The wrench that might gum up the works here is that Soderling is hitting his groundstrokes so big, that he is controlling the court from behind the baseline (kind of like Tsonga beating Nadal at Aussie 08). But your stats seem to say that is not really true. We'll need to see your summary after you have done all 2 1/2 sets.

We have to remember that in a close match, just one break point can be the difference and the stats on the break games seem to support your hypothesis here.

I think serving well (more that high percentage of first serves; perhaps a function of number of serice winners as well as aces and average speed) is intimately linked to midcourt opportunities in service games. Then return success (like an Agassi would have and I don't know what statistic would indicate that independent of midcourt attack success rate) would similarly be linked to midcourt opportunities in return game, although probably more a function of poor service success by the opponent.

____

I wrote the above last night before the final today. I doubt there is much correlation, but I'll be curious to see. Soderling, in his words, got a tennis lesson. But after a forgiveable first set (first slam final), Fed had only one break point which he converted and Soderling had two which he did not. Those were all in the third set. The 7-6, 6-4 says Soderling played a "pretty good" 2nd and 3rd sets, but he didn't play at any where near the level he played earlier. Part of the credit goes to Roger, but there was so much more than simple stats going on here. Maybe it's there in your mdcrt opportunities, but the huge difference is in points controlled. Except for a 5 mph faster average 2nd serve against Nadal and Gonzales, Soderling was not that far off according to the stats. Served 60%, won 64% of 1st serve points, and 56% of 2nd serve points, normally pretty good numbers which were actually better than that in the 2nd and 3rd. He only allowed one break point and the tie-breaker.

I felt the tension at the end of the second set, but I think Mac/Mary kind of killed it granting Fed was running away with it, when in fact, he was in a lot tighter match than it seemed.

Anyway, curious to hear other thoughts,
don

[airforce1]

When these guys at the top of the game "play well", they don't make unforced errors. It seems your hypothesis is that these matches, assuming both players "show up", comes down to how well they play the midcourt attack points: how often do they attack and how often they offer that opportunity to their opponents and whether or not they achieve that 75% conversion rate.

This makes great sense to me. Serving and volleying is dead. If they are not going to make unforced errors (certainly Federer and Nadal when they are playing well), the only place they really take chances is in their midcourt play.

The wrench that might gum up the works here is that Soderling is hitting his groundstrokes so big, that he is controlling the court from behind the baseline (kind of like Tsonga beating Nadal at Aussie 08). But your stats seem to say that is not really true. We'll need to see your summary after you have done all 2 1/2 sets.

We have to remember that in a close match, just one break point can be the difference and the stats on the break games seem to support your hypothesis here.

Anyway, curious to hear other thoughts,
don

thanks, you make very interesting points.

Yes, tennis is quite a complex game and there will surely be many exceptions to the rule, so to speak.

Again, what I look for is the "difference maker", in matches of players at about the same playing level. For sure there are going to be matches that are very even and end up tipping on 1-2 points, but even in them, they may never have been so tight had one of the players mounted a good number of mid ct attacks with a high conversion rate.

Maybe the main point of all this for me, is that this an an area that is wide open for more training approaches and innovation. Ask yourself, how clear are you on what constitutes a short or mid ct ball ? What are your methods for attacking these balls? What are you training and teaching your students in this area? I've spent a lot of time on this and the info has been pretty thin.

If you have great answers for these questions, (anybody) I'd love to hear about them on here or by email. I've not seen that level of attention to this area of the game at Macci's, Everett or Bolleterri. I can't say no one is doing it, but I've been exposed to academies and training all over the country and have not seen this type work present to any level of detail.