ATP Cincinnati 2013...Cincinnati, Ohio

[tennis_chiro]

Is it more than a better forehand?!

There seems to be pretty uniform agreement that Rafa's forehand has gone to new levels, especially down the line. But what about the argument that he has made a conscious effort, since his comeback at the beginning of the year and even more since his return after the Wimbledon loss, to play a much more aggressive style and shorten the points and thereby spare his body some wear and tear; I think he has made such a conscious tactical and strategic change in his approach. Furthermore, I think it is working even better than he even imagined. Anybody know where to get the stats on length of rallies and trips to the net?

What do you guys think?

don

[stotty]

Spot on...

There seems to be pretty uniform agreement that Rafa's forehand has gone to new levels, especially down the line. But what about the argument that he has made a conscious effort, since his comeback at the beginning of the year and even more since his return after the Wimbledon loss, to play a much more aggressive style and shorten the points and thereby spare his body some wear and tear; I think he has made such a conscious tactical and strategic change in his approach. Furthermore, I think it is working even better than he even imagined. Anybody know where to get the stats on length of rallies and trips to the net?

What do you guys think?

don

Couldn't agree more. He's played virtually no ploppy forehands over the last two hard court events...most are searing bullets. He's working far more aggressively when inside the baseline. He's gone away from his career long strategy of working his opponent off the court to hitting winners off the bat when a clear opportunity turns up...the forehands up the line are catching opponents out...as well being brilliant, opponents who have played him many times before clearly aren't expecting them.

The only two players with the movement to live at this level are Murray and Djokovic. The US is going to be interesting.

Nadal is also serving better and with far more variation than before. He's been very efficient at the net, also.

Not sure what the rally count stats are but I'm confident they must be two or three shots shorter than usual.

At their best, I make Nadal one centimeter in front of Djokovic right now.

Where Murray stands in this is hard to know. His form is patchy (always has been more vulnerable to unexpected losses compared to the other three), but a Nadal v Murray showdown would be interesting if Murray plays at the top of his game.

I heard today Federer has dropped to 7 in the world rankings. That must hurt.

[tennis_chiro]

...
I heard today Federer has dropped to 7 in the world rankings. That must hurt.

I wondered... so I checked the ATP Rankings history. Got into the top 10 in May 2002 and then entered the top 6 soon after. He stayed in the top 5 from February 2003 until last week, continuously! I thought that probably hadn't been beaten in the Open era, But Connors entered the top 4 in October '73 and stayed in the top 4 continuously until March '86. I tried to look up a couple of others like Sampras, Becker, Lendl and Edberg. Lendl was probably second to Connors in the consecutive weeks in the top 5 category, but it is unclear from the ATP ranking history. It would be interesting if Sharko would publish consecutive weeks in the top 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20.

But for weeks at the top, you have to look at Rosewall's ATP profile. He was still ranked as high as 2 on the ATP computer in his 40's! He must have been top 4 in the world from when he turned pro in '57 until at least 1972, when he won the Australian singles and doubles and that epic WCT final against Laver; that was 19 years after he won the Australian and French singles in '53! He was still pretty good in '74 when he reached the Wimbledon and US Open finals. That's longevity.

[dimitrios]

Have enjoyed the comments about Rafa.

Re his more aggressive style of play, I think it's correct to say that he did this to generate less wear and tear on his body, especially at this time of year. But I would say too that he's used this tactically to take it to Djokovic rather than consistently staying in protracted rallies with Djokovic -- a scenario that Djok has found much more comfortable over the years. In their match in Montreal, Djokovic seemed under a kind of pressure from Nadal that I hadn't seen in quite some time.

Also, while the Nadal forehand has been outstanding this summer, his serve, as others have indicated, looked much heavier and faster. It looked like a much greater weapon for him than I can ever recall.

[don_budge]

Tournament preparation...Rafael Nadal's new Theory

Have enjoyed the comments about Rafa.

Also, while the Nadal forehand has been outstanding this summer, his serve, as others have indicated, looked much heavier and faster. It looked like a much greater weapon for him than I can ever recall.

But this brings us to Rafael Nadal. What's up with this hombre? Is he cheating? His first tournament back in how many weeks and once again he is as fit as a fiddle and head and shoulders over the rest of the field with only Djokovic to contend with him.

So let's get this straight. He retires after the Australian Open due to problems with his knee...so he goes and somehow straightens out his problem then returns to the field and captures every title that he plays for. Not only that but he extends his good fortune to the clay court season in Europe and wins everything in sight...including the jewel at Roland Garros.

He skips the practice grass court sessions then goes to Wimbledon and loses a half heartedly played match against some nobody then once again he is disappeared from the scene. But once again he shows up at the next tournament and just out classes everyone in terms of fitness and strength and being sharp with his game.

I don't know anything about doping cycles...but there is something fishy going on here.

Traditionally speaking...the best preparation for playing tournaments has always been to my knowledge...playing tournaments. Federer himself stated recently that he liked to prepare for big tournaments by playing as many as six or seven tournaments leading up to a big event. My dear old coach always stressed the importance of playing at least five events before considering myself prepared to play serious tournament tennis. I stress this same thing to my students...my protege Gustav recently pointed out to me the comments by Federer. He thinks that I am right all of the time...or at least I have a shot at being right.

But when it comes to Nadal's energy...he clearly has more of it than any other tennis player alive and not only that he magically can channel it to perform just about perfectly without any preparation in the competitive arena where it all goes down. He just steps up to the plate and starts pounding it out of the park. I think that the baseball simile is appropriate here seeing as there have been a bunch of million dollar babies being told to sit it out for a spell. Turning them into millions dollar cry babies.

When Gustav made that comment we were at a restaurant in Skövde, Sweden called Benidorm's...I was buying pizza for he and Julia who had helped me out as junior trainers the past couple of years plus they had been in the program for their entire tennis playing careers. Now they are graduating and off to other things. Julia's freaking cell phone must have gone off at least two hundred times and each time she dutifully checked it for some meaningless drivel...sort of like Pavlov's dog. I left mine in the car...Gustav's never made an appearance. It's a new era I am telling you...Virtual Morality. It is so rude that you cannot hold a person's attention in the flesh when the stupid mobile takes precedence. It's so interesting to watch them grow and mature. Such a big part of my teaching is learning to make decisions...tennis teaches that to us. Among other things.

But anyways...my lessons on tournament preparation have been more or less rendered obsolete by Rafael Nadal. He has shown me a much more successful way to prepare for tournaments. Get injured...or fake an injury and then take an inordinate amount of time off. What better way of staying tournament tough and staying sharper than the rest of the field? What better way to improve your forehand and your serve than to retire from the tournament spotlight and do whatever you are doing sequestered away from the prying eyes of spectators and the media.

Tennis is a game of energy. But it is also a game of harnessing that energy. A big part of the theory of preparing to play a big tournament by playing a number of lesser events is to get comfortable in the tournament situation...to say nothing of the rest of the factors such as technique under pressure, endurance, comfort of playing before large audiences. Every tennis player before Nadal proved that this axiom was a working theory and not mere speculation...but he has clearly blown this one out of the water. He has won two successive events at the ATP 1000 level where virtually every high ranking tennis player was present at and just simply out classed the whole field. He made them all look like amateurs. He just thumbed his nose at the conventional wisdom of tournament preparation and said stick it where the sun don't shine and went out and took home the first prize and all of the loot that goes with it.

It's really unbelievable. I don't believe it either. Whenever I get a chance to speak about tennis and point out this little fun fact to tennis aficionado's, typical sports fans or just lay persons...I leave them shaking their heads when the discussion turns to PED's, performance enhancing drugs. This is the age of designer drugs. Although I have no real knowledge how the athletes cycle their ingestion of the magic elixir's available to the sports elite these days...this looks conspicuously fishy to me.

[dimitrios]

It's really unbelievable. I don't believe it either. Whenever I get a chance to speak about tennis and point out this little fun fact to tennis aficionado's, typical sports fans or just lay persons...I leave them shaking their heads when the discussion turns to PED's, performance enhancing drugs. This is the age of designer drugs. Although I have no real knowledge how the athletes cycle their ingestion of the magic elixir's available to the sports elite these days...this looks conspicuously fishy to me.

It is actually tough to take your position as you run the risk of ridicule from those who can easily accuse you of "conjecture." That's fine but I would say that baseball's Steroid Era and the travesty known as Lance Armstrong have taught me that if something in sports seems "unbelievable" then it probably is. Frankly I no longer feel the need to prove it; I rather await the proof that the athletes themselves are clean. Thus far no such convincing proof exists.

Unfortunately the sport of professional tennis has no way of doing that right now and as a result it is generating greater numbers of skeptics about the purportedly heroic deeds of its combatants. The author of this piece ends it on the same point: http://espn.go.com/tennis/story/_/id...g-testing-next

This is, if I may, the genius of Bud Selig of late. He understands that trust from fans is earned and continually maintained and without it his sport is in trouble -- morally and, yes, financially. It is my sincere hope that tennis wakes up to this fact before some great damage is done. Tough choices (at times humiliating ones) will need to be made in the short-term in order to preserve the long-term.

Two other points in closing:
1.The tennis schedule, with the demands it places on the body, is no longer humanly feasible. It is a major part of the problem and one of the reasons an athlete could cite (to themselves) as "needing" to dope. If we have age restrictions for when girls can enter the WTA full-time, why not put restrictions on how many tournaments WTA/ATP players may play?
2. Unless the entire sport is cleaned up there will be absurdly intense pressure for others to dope just to keep up with the few (or many, as the case may be) who are doping. Whatever policy is in place must be unflinchingly aggressive. (Funny, too, how the players have complained about how aggressive/invasive the current policy is. The best defense is a good...)

[stotty]

Hmm...

In the case of Nadal and the rumours about PEDs, one thing seems to get forgotten. Nadal has got better through skill. His forehand is even better, his serve is better. PEDs are purely about endurance. They will bless a player with no skill whatsoever.

Todays schedule isn't all that grueling for most players, only those who progress repeatedly through tournaments. In the 50s and 60s the head-to-head series meant players played far more matches than they do today. And they were the elite playing each other day in day out...long, tight matches.

Players today are spoilt. If we start bowing to their requests to play fewer matches, where will it end? For the kind of money the top four are on, shouldn't they be expected to entertain us? Life's not that tough for these guys...they earn millions playing tennis....playing a bloody game!

[don_budge]

Wrong...

In the case of Nadal and the rumours about PEDs, one thing seems to get forgotten. Nadal has got better through skill. His forehand is even better, his serve is better. PEDs are purely about endurance. They will bless a player with no skill whatsoever.

wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again. ped's are not purely about endurance!!!

[tennis_chiro]

Two things:

First of all, d_b, there was an awful lot of rust on the top players at the beginning of Montreal. Not just on Nadal, but the other top players as well. Rafa noticeably improved as the week went on and benefited significantly from the rust that was on Djokovic's game in the semis. But by the time he got to the finals, he was looking pretty good. By the middle of Cincy, he was looking all the way back and better than I ever remember seeing him play. It's reasonable for him to recover his match toughness in just a few matches considering the hundreds he has played. But he didn't really come back firing on all cylinders in his first match. The same was true in South America last winter. He struggled and took a bad loss in the final of his first match back. Then in the second week, he lost sets on red clay to players ranked 78 and 111. But by the time he got to Ferrer in the final of Acapulco, he was playing pretty well and it carried him through Indian Wells. His only losses this year are that early one to Zeballos and the bad loss to Darcis at Wimbledon and the final to Djokovic in straights at Monte Carlo (when Nole said he played perfect tennis). He went through that whole stretch on the clay up to the French without having to play Djokovic again. Ferrer made it interesting the first two sets in Madrid and Rome, but only Djokovic has taken him deep in the last set (9-7 5th at RG and 7-6 at Montreal). But I think he really is playing at a higher level as of the second half of the Montreal tournament. I see him as a legitimate favorite at the Open.

Stotty has given a little support to the idea that Rafa is really playing better, but I don't think enough has been made of the degree to which Nadal is playing more aggressively and shortening the points. That has nothing to do with PED's, but it is definitely helping his body. He went three with Federer and Dimitrov, but he spared himself the third against Berdych and Isner; and the match with Isner didn't entail the kind of running and amazing display of physicality we have become accustomed to seeing when he plays Murray or Djokovic. If he continues to play with that kind of aggression, I think he becomes even more of a headache for everyone else than he has already been on the hardcourts and in the indoor season. He wasn't relying on the high bounce; he was just hitting winners into the forehand corner like never before.

Second, on the drug testing. Isn't the ATP introducing a "Biological Passport" so that they have comparitive values to recognize where there is a change in anyone's blood chemistry. This measure coupled with unscheduled testing makes it very hard to avoid detection. I think players ought to be able to take HGH under a doctor's supervision to help them heal up from injuries in a period where they are away from competition, but not to recover the next day from a 5 hour match or to enable them to increase the intensity of their training. Some of the legal treatments athletes are getting are not available to players on a more modest budget, but we all benefit when players like Kobe Bryant find their 'hops' again. Even the Pope went for the PRP therapy (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/...knee-treatment). We don't know what Rafa did exactly last summer to get his knees to come back, but would we object if he did go for the PRP therapy in Germany.

It's not fair to make so many accusations without any evidence. Certainly, Nadal did something. I think it was more than just rest. I'm a chiropractor. I've seen tremendous results from purely natural and totally legal supplements. I know the downside of some of the illegal steroids. I wish we could all know better exactly how Rafa went about rehabbing his knees. Maybe it would help me loosen up my own back a little (doubt it).

Just some thoughts,

don

[dimitrios]

Stotty has given a little support to the idea that Rafa is really playing better, but I don't think enough has been made of the degree to which Nadal is playing more aggressively and shortening the points.... He wasn't relying on the high bounce; he was just hitting winners into the forehand corner like never before.

Second, on the drug testing. Isn't the ATP introducing a "Biological Passport" so that they have comparitive values to recognize where there is a change in anyone's blood chemistry. This measure coupled with unscheduled testing makes it very hard to avoid detection.

Rafa "just hitting winners into the forehand corner like never before"? You don't think that PED's could be used to assist with that? Really? They sure helped Barry Bonds (considered by many to be the greatest hitter of his generation) hit home runs "like never before" in the early 2000s. Hence the name PEDs. They don't simply accelerate recovery; they do exactly what their name suggests -- enhance performance.

As for testing, my understanding is that the program has begun. According to Stuart Miller, who oversees the sport's anti-doping efforts for the International Tennis Federation, "in effect we are up and running." The following link reveals a seeming lack of deep commitment from the ITF on the matter. I think we'll have to see how it plays out, how it gets enacted and ultimately what results it yields:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tennis/2013/08/01/tennis-biological-passport-itf-atp-wta/2610173/

[dimitrios]

In the case of Nadal and the rumours about PEDs, one thing seems to get forgotten. Nadal has got better through skill. His forehand is even better, his serve is better. PEDs are purely about endurance. They will bless a player with no skill whatsoever.

Todays schedule isn't all that grueling for most players, only those who progress repeatedly through tournaments. In the 50s and 60s the head-to-head series meant players played far more matches than they do today. And they were the elite playing each other day in day out...long, tight matches.

Players today are spoilt. If we start bowing to their requests to play fewer matches, where will it end? For the kind of money the top four are on, shouldn't they be expected to entertain us? Life's not that tough for these guys...they earn millions playing tennis....playing a bloody game!

Absolutely PEDs could make a player's serve and forehand bigger, just as they've made pitchers pitch faster, runners run faster, sluggers slug farther and more often, etc. Here's a fabulous SI piece that ran last year, replete with several great links on the matter. A long-ish read but quite engaging and ultimately moving: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/201...ids/index.html

[tennis_chiro]

Absolutely PEDs could make a player's serve and forehand bigger, just as they've made pitchers pitch faster, runners run faster, sluggers slug farther and more often, etc. Here's a fabulous SI piece that ran last year, replete with several great links on the matter. A long-ish read but quite engaging and ultimately moving: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/201...ids/index.html

Reading that SI story about Nault, no doubt PED's could help with service or forehand velocity, but I think the difference in Nadal's play is a tactical choice and a decision to hit through the ball more, not a question of him generating more racket head velocity or swinging harder. Also, the strings; sometimes the ball comes off the racket like they are playing a video game.

don

[stotty]

Reading that SI story about Nault, no doubt PED's could help with service or forehand velocity, but I think the difference in Nadal's play is a tactical choice and a decision to hit through the ball more, not a question of him generating more racket head velocity or swinging harder. Also, the strings; sometimes the ball comes off the racket like they are playing a video game.

don

Very emotive this PEDs stuff. No other subject on the forum brings out such strong views.

I don't think Nadal's forehand is any bigger than it has been power-wise. It's just he's made a decision to play more aggressively and hit the big ones more often. And it's the tactical variation on the service that's making the difference, more than the power. His serve has always been incredibly predictable...suddenly now it is much less so.

Whether he reverts to type when he plays Murray or Djokovic over a long haul fiver setter will be interesting to see.

I subscribe to the idea that Nadal has been taking time out to retool and work things out better for the future, and that his turning the tables on Djokovic has been the most exceptional feature to come out of this whole story

[dimitrios]

I don't think Nadal's forehand is any bigger than it has been power-wise. It's just he's made a decision to play more aggressively and hit the big ones more often. And it's the tactical variation on the service that's making the difference, more than the power. His serve has always been incredibly predictable...suddenly now it is much less so.

I tend to agree about the level of aggressiveness in Nadal's tactics. (His ability to adjust his game continually and reap success from those adjustments at the highest levels is one of the great achievements in the history of tennis.) However, his serve in the U.S. has looked substantially stronger, faster, heavier. Anyone recall what his typical MPH's were of late? (I'll be watching for that at the Open.)

[stotty]

I tend to agree about the level of aggressiveness in Nadal's tactics. (His ability to adjust his game continually and reap success from those adjustments at the highest levels is one of the great achievements in the history of tennis.) However, his serve in the U.S. has looked substantially stronger, faster, heavier. Anyone recall what his typical MPH's were of late? (I'll be watching for that at the Open.)

I don't know what the mph stats are on Nadal's serve since his comeback, but his action seems to have simply evolved and got better over time. His serve is very reliable, and he regularly plays matches where his first serve percentage is in the 70s. The thing I like most about Nadal's serve (and his game in general) is his ability to "grab" the ball onto his strings. Few other players have this ability and it makes him incredibly consistent. It's almost like he grabs the ball by the scruff of the net and puts it over the net.

But, yes, like you, I would love to know the mph stats over the last two hard court tournaments he's played.

The things I having been referring to in this thread, I feel, are skill-based. PEDs can play a significant part in tennis, and I realise the subject can be emotive as ultimately PEDs equate to cheating, but most of Nadal's improvement can be explained through his more aggressive approach to the game, and his service improvement can be put down to better technique.

The most significant improvement to Nadal's service would seem to be weight transfer. Everything is more fluid than it once was.

He's going to finish up the best player ever, if he isn't already.