Fed/ Soderling 1st set

[airforce1]

This first set illustrates how when players don't execute well in the mid ct attack sequences, even match ups become uneven very quick.

Fed did force 2 errors from Soderling from basline rallys, but he also had 3 UE's to Soderlings 2UEs in rallys. = pretty even match there

Serving- each had 2 aces and about 3-4 svc winners.
= pretty even match there

Mid Court attacks

Fed had 9 winner/FEs (4 serving/5 returning) + 0 UE's = plus 9
and clearly well over the 75% mark on conversions

Sod had 3 winner/FEs (3 serving/ 0 returning) + 5 UE's = minus 2
and all 3 of these came on his holds,
with most of the UE's coming when he was broken.
and well below the 75% mark for conversions.

[airforce1]

2ond set

You can contrast that 1st set results with this second set, which was tight and went to a breaker.


Fed was a net zero from the rally shots with 4-4 = 0
Sod was a minus 2 with 4-6 = minus 2
pretty close for 12 games and a breaker

Serving was very close too until Fed hit all those aces in the breaker.

And the difference maker, that I think got them to the breaker, (as they both served up to par or better)

Sod was 11 of 14 on conversions at from mid ct attacks with only one of them an outright UE.
2 were nice passes by Fed. All of the mid ct attacks were on Service games.
This is a 78.5% conversion rate by Sod, which fits the theory, as it enabled him to hold consistently.

Fed was 8 of 9 on conversions from the mid ct attacks, which were also all on svc games.
This is a 89% conversion rate, which along with his excellent serving, allowed him to hold easily most of the times. A couple of love holds.

What I would take from this set other than how the mid ct attack conversion rates, along with good serving, helped them both to hold,
is that either one of them (but more important for Soderling) could have taken more chances from the rally area when returning to earn some break chances. Neither player had many Rally UEs in return games. Fed had only 1! Maybe shows he was too defensive in return games, along with the stat that he had 0 mid ct attack sequences in return games that were point ending. Sod also had a 0 here as well.
To break and avoid a tiebreaker, they needed to initiate some mid ct attacks against the server and pressure them more.

That being said, I feel Fed played it perfectly on another level. I said all along that he needed to get his UEs under control, and give other players a chance to lose it vs always trying to win it. It was just good play by Sod and credit goes to him for not giving any Svc games away!