CraigC: Strategic Analysis of this year's French Open Final?

[lukman41985]

About Roger...

Roger said that as a youngster, he used to take losses very badly. That he would cry and would not forget about it for some time. However, he said as he got older, he got over losses easier. Maybe the coping mechanism he's found is that he invests less emotionally, which makes him look like less of a fighter, so he's not as devastated, like he used to be as a junior, when he does lose? Just a theory of mine, anyway.

[bobmonsour]

Roger's first serve also let him down

Wonderful insights by all who have posted. I'm a new poster, but wanted to chime in that I remember cringing countless times as Federer was down and his first serve was just not going in.

I expect that, like many players, if the 1st serve isn't working well, so goes a touch of confidence and hence, confidence in other aspects of the game.

I also agree that the Federer non-slice backhand was not working at all, as was well-described in JohnYs charting of both players' Aggressive Margin. Federer's backhand number was staggering.

I must say that I was sad for the loss as it was clear that Federer didn't execute well at all.

Lastly, the one saving grace with Tivo is that you can skip a lot of the blabber that they call commentary during the match. The chatter at Wimbledon going on is quite ridiculous. I really wish that there was at least some more meaningful analysis going on (the kind that TP.net gives us).

Regards,
-Bob

[forehand]

To beat Federer & why Roddick can't

It seems to me that in order to beat Federer you have to impose on him a sence of urgency.

Like Craig stated in his awesome analysis above, Nadal made Federer feel the pressure to hit a winner. To add to this (or part cause for this), Nadal gets impossible balls back, and to beat him you must win each point several times.

And looking at Safin v Fed at aus open '05; Safin can hit winners from anywhere anytime and play as fast as he likes. Federer probably feels in a hurry to end the point before Safin does.

Both of these players are able to take Fed out of his comfort zone; where he can dictate the pace of the rally, stay in it for as long as he likes and decide when he wants to juice it up and hit a winner. (At least it looks that easy )

They are creating that sense of urgency, Nadal more so than Safin, causing Federer to overhit, rush the rallies, stray from his normal point construction and make more errors.

Looking at the US Open final, Fed was under pressure at times. But he never looked worried. Why? Roddick hits the ball hard, but he does not move well enough to remain a threat if Fed mixes it up and keeps the ball in play. Roddick also lacks variety, and Fed seems to read him like an open book. Roddick can not take charge in an exchange by using the backhand. This leaves the forehand, where Federer has the best in the game. Fed also plays great defence, and probably makes Roddick feel like he has to win each point several times.

Federer can also play the ball well on the rise, robbing Roddick of time, and exposing his lack of mobility. Roddick has no good response to this.

This all adds up to Federer not feeling rushed to hit those winners, playing flawless tennis in his comfort zone. Federer looked like the greatest player the world has ever seen in that final. I am not so sure he would have if he was facing Nadal, or even Youzhny. He may still have won it, albeit with less flair.

I'm enjoying your articles, Craig, keep up the good work!

Fred.

[jhm36]

Agreed, Fred. Nice post. Looked like target practice at times. Roddick has got to change his game so that he can worry Federer more. 69 winners to 19 unforced errors is a crazy ratio. And Federer only had 126 points. Over 50 percent of Federer's points came off winners while hitting very few unforced errors. That's called playing deep in your comfort zone.

[EricMatuszewski]

Craig please do commentary

Jesus, I might actually enjoy TV commentary if it was at the level of our Forum.

Craig--fabulous. Glenn thank you also.

I hope we all appreciate the value of Craig's contribution here at no extra subscription cost...

Craig,

Please become a commentator so I can turn off the mute button during matches. Your analysis of this match was a joy to read. Your use of pro points to illustrate your articles was beutifully done. It's the most easy to understand and complete strategy primer I've ever seen. Hope to hear more from you in the future.

Eric

[petegrif]

nadal's serve

I think it is natural to spend a lot of time analysing the play after the serve. But perhaps the most striking thing about the French final and the Wimbledon final is how few chances Roger had to break. This is extremely important because Fed doesn't seem to have that kind of problem breaking most people, even those with huge serves - like Roddick, or Karlovic. And I believe that this inability to break Nadal is deeply corrosive to Fed psychologically. If the other guy is busy putting all kinds of pressure on your serve, which is supposed to be one of the very best in the game, in practically every service game, and you are making virtually no impression on his service games, it casts a pretty major pall over your prospects and eats away at you as the match proceeds. I think this is a major problem for Fed with Nadal.

Why is it that Fed has so much trouble with Nadal's serve? It isn't particularly fast. It is highly predictable. And yet even Fed can't break it.
Here's the pattern. Serve at Fed's back hand all the time. So when serving from the deuce court, Nadal goes up the T. When serving from the ad court, he goes out wide. VERY rarely he varies it to keep Fed honest. But these variations are even rarer when his serve is under any kind of pressure and he wants the low risk play (15-30, 30-30).

So Fed knows exactly where the ball is going! And he's a great player and a great returner, so what the heck is going on? It isn't as if Nadal even has a lot of pace on the ball most of the time. He is quite content to serve at 100 mph. But what he does have is a lot of accuracy and action on the ball. It IS going to land near the T, it is going to go out wide, and it is going to move like crazy. So it is going to be awkward - very awkward.

How do you counter this? IMHO you have to cheat. You have to cheat enough and often enough to force Nadal to break his pattern. So when he is serving from the deuce court you know it is going up the T so cheat across, dare him to go out wide and as soon as he's in his action cheat more. Try to get across enough to take a forehand if it drifts your way. Same idea when he's serving from the ad court. Cheat across to take the ball earlier on the backhand side. This is particularly effective if you get any kind of an advantage (0-15, 15-3) or even equality (30-30) because Nadal doesn't like to take a higher risk serve in these situations.

Will he adjust? Of course. He will have to think about breaking his pattern. And that's the whole point! You are now forcing him to adjust. And the key thing to realise is that this is a very low risk strategy because just carrying on with the existing pattern is NOT WORKING!!!!

We have a test case. late in the Wimbledon final, the last couple of Rafa service games in the last set, this is EXACTLY what Fed did. He lost some points to Rafa breaking his pattern but he rattled Rafa and forced him to THINK rather than just focus on serving to the same place all the time. and if you look at those last 2 service games you will see very clearly that Rafa made some mistakes for this very reason. Fed was cheating, even when Rafa was serving from the Ad court he was moving so far around he was hitting huge forehand returns. It really shook Rafa up.

I think this is extremely important for Roger because if he is in a rut where he starts every Rafa service point at a disadvantage which Rafa is very very capable of exploiting, he is (to put it politely) totallys screwed. he has to remember this lesson and experiment with mixing it up like this and breaking Rafa's service pattern.

Just my 2c

[gsheiner]

Pete,

Here are my 2 cents in response to your 2 cents.

I think that you've correctly outlined some of the patterns going on with the Nadal serve and that your insight into a counter stratgey is also insightful.

I've charted Nadal's serving patterns for most of the last 2 French finals and the last 2 wimbledon finals.

As I've noted before and , as you pointed out here, Nadal often basically lets you know where's he's going to serve. His reasoning must be that his slice serve is good enough to get a relatively weak return that will allow him to begin to dominate the point with his forehand.

You can't really argue with his results. You could possibly say that this serving strategy is less suited for tiebreaks where free points on the serve
are much more important than in regular games. Ergo, he lost both tiebreaks to Fed and his tiebreak record is not all that hot.

Nadal is quite capable and fairly confident, in my opinion, in serving down the middle in the ad court. If you cheat too much to take away the wide serve, he can burn you with smoke down the middle. He did this repeatedly in the latter stages of last year's wimbledon finals.

As you recall Nadal got smoked at the beginning of the first set of last year's Wimbledon and was down 5-0. I charted his serving pattern and he had served 11 out of the first 13 first serves to the backhand.

I believe that last year Federer had received so much grief in the tennis world stemming from his inablity to return the Nadal serve at the French Open. People like Wilander were basically saying why not just stand further to the left to cover the slice and make him beat you by going the other way if he can.

Near the end of the first set in the Wimbledon final last year, Nadal started serving down the middle in the ad court and he continued this for the rest of the match. He served almost 50 % of his ad points last year in the second set down the middle and he won 80% of the points.

So, I believe that Nadal is quite capable of mixing it up in the ad court.

Where I think Nadal has trouble is in the deuce court. He rarely serves the wide serve in the deuce court. This of course the serve that Fed, Sampras, and Mcenroe all had mastered. ( I'm talking about the Fed and Sampras wide serve in the ad court and the Mac serve in the deuce court since Mac was a lefty like Nadal). These great servers serve wide and get the ball a few feet up the line making the serve almost unreturnable.

And, by being able to serve this wide, they force the opponent to alter the return position, making the serve down the middle more effective.

Look at Nadal's starting position in the deuce court and then compare it with the starting position in the deuce court of other lefties like Mac, Rusedski, Leconte, Gomez, Martina.

All these other lefties stand a few feet away from the center line. Nadal hugs the center line when he serves in the deuce court. I believe this gives him an even better angle for the serve down the middle but hurts his angle for going wide in the deuce court.

You can't argue with Nadal's results but I'd like to see what would happen if Nadal moved a few feet further away form the center line in the deuce court like the others and improved the wide serve .

If I were his coach and he struggled this year again on the hard courts,
I'd experiment with this idea to see what happens.

Cheers,

[johnyandell]

These are some great and very astute comments. I plan to keep them in mind when I do the analysis of the Wimby final for the next issue.

Thanks and keep these thoughts coming please.

John Yandell

[petegrif]

i think you are absolutely right that he is better able to mix it up from the ad court. But a big part of my point is that you have to force him to think. you have to break his pattern and make him hit some balls out wide and others up the T otherwise it is just to easy or him. up the T, out wide, up the T, out wide... Why should he change this pattern at all if it is working so well. The big advantage of forcing him to change is that of course you will lose some points where he goes the other way, but he isn´t as much in a groove and now the mental element has entered HIS service games and when he makes a couple of mistakes and gets the rock paper scissors game wrong he can be made to pay. without that psychological element working on him it is just way way too easy for him. and as i pointed out, this strategy risks nothing because the other pattern has historically just resulted in a series of easy holds.