Davydenko's Head

[oliensis]

Watched the Federer Davydenko match in Oz. Stayed up late to watch it and managed to keep my eyes open until Federer was up a break in the 4th set.

I've never seen a professional tennis player go from being THAT HOT (Davydenko) to THAT COLD that quick. I may never have seen anyone ever playing as well as Davydenko did through 1 1/2 sets.

Federer definitely started poorly, but to my eye Davy's play had a lot to do with it. The change in conditions played a part as well (once the sun was off the court the surface did look to have slowed down). But those are incidentals in the story, I think.

I've watched chunks of the match again on DVD and it looks just as mysterious as it did live. I found myself laughing outloud at the severity and instantaneousness of how the match swung.

I've had experiences like that on the court, where I went from very hot to cold, or vice versa, but not any swings of that magnitude.

This would be a great subject for an article on this site by any of the experts on the mental game, I think. I would love to gain understanding of what were the changes, physically, in what Davy was doing "before" and "after" other than "hittings winners" and then "making unforced errors." Clearly the change was mental, but how those mental changes expressed themselves in the nuts and bolts of his play would make an interesting study. (I mean more specific than "moving better/worse" or "worse 1st serve %." I mean, e.g., was his first step to the ball later or less explosive? Was his racquet preparation delayed? Were his shot selection and patterns suddenly different? Was he suddenly caught playing much further behind the baseline because his shot had lost depth? etc.)

Davy's W/UE count, set by set: 7/5, 6/15, 4/14, 16/18

Federer's W/UE count, set by set: 9/17, 10/10, 2/2, 14/14

So, on its face it looks like in 1st 1 1/2 sets Federer was spraying the ball, and in 2H set 2 and set 3 Davy was spraying the ball. The in the final set, it was close again. But there's important stuff underneath and behind those stats.

Best to all,
ao

[rosheem]

It would also be interesting to see how the serving stats changed over the course of the match as well.

I think I heard the commentators mention that Davydenko's average first-serve speed was much lower against Federer than it was over the course of his previous matches. That could have let Federer get comfortable on the return and gain earlier control of points.

One thing I seem to notice with Federer is that when he's hitting his first serve, everything else seems to fall into place. Then sometimes, he just seems to be totally unable to find that first serve, and things unravel.

I hope he serves well during the final. It drives me nuts when he can't find his first serve. Murray's return is too good to feed him a steady diet of second serves.

[chuck62]

turbo forehand

When I watched this match it looked like Davydenko was winning most of the rallies. Then all of the sudden Fed started hitting these unreturnable flat nuke forehands that landed about an inch inside the baseline and this really seemed to take Davydenko off guard and demoralize him. At that point it was all over for Gollum.