Federer on the sliced backhand

[lukman41985]

I know John, Craig, and even McEnroe have wondered why Federer doesn't slice more against Nadal. Here are Roger's thoughts on the sliced backhand. This is from http://www.wimbledon.org/en_GB/news/...467875765.html

Q. Did you sense that you were giving him more trouble with your sliced backhand? You were doing great in the first set, then just used it to break him by the second set. Were you waiting for that moment?

ROGER FEDERER: I mean, I was struggling to really get into his service games, you know, midway through the second and third, fourth set, was getting way more difficult. I knew that's actually what I expected from the start, you know. But I had such a great start, so you always hope that you're gonna break him one more, and another one. It's all going very smoothly. But, uhm, the slice definitely worked well today, and I think that is obviously why I play so well on grass, you know. Other surfaces, obviously it's hard especially on clay, you know. A good defense slice can help you out, but an offensive slice sometimes doesn't really give you everything, you know, on clay. On hard court it pays off more. That's maybe why my results are even better on grass and hard court.

[jhm36]

Thanks, lukman.

You know, I somehow thought he'd use his offensive slice even more than he did. A few of his slice floated long and in my mind I was reading that error as being caused by Federer's unsureness to really go for a skidding, hard-driven offensive slice or to simply punch it back as a defensive slice. Who knows. I was just happy to see him finally using it against Nadal.

And how about that return game of Federer's. He rarely returns that well against Nadal. Wonder what caused that? Lower balls to his backhand, probably, as well as Nadal serving more often to the forehand, though the BBC feed said Nadal was winning a lot of points by serving to the Federer forehand. Anyone have the stats on this? I didn't see a detailed serve feature on the Wimbledon page. At any rate, it was good to see Roger being more aggressive on the service return, something you have to do, I think we're all in agreement against the ultra-agressive Nadal who is just killer when getting anything short on the return.

[gsheiner]

I did chart the serving patterns and they reveal some very interesting dynamics. I"ll talk about Nadal's first serve placement as this was his major strategic decision serving-wise ( almost all his second serves were topspin/slice to fed's backhand).

For the match, Nadal served approximately 90% of his first serves to Fed's backhand in the deuce court and 10% to the forehand. In the ad court, he served about 50-50 backhand/forehand.

For the match, Nadal won 68% of his first serve points and his highest winning percentage was the serve to the forehand ( down the middle) in the ad court.

This is my sense of how the tactics played out during the match. In the first set, Nadal came out and served predominantly to the Fed backhand in both the deuce and ad sides ( Nadal served 11 of his first 13 serves to Fed's backhand).

Federer came out, I believe, totally prepared to neutralize the Nadal slice serve to his backhand. He was ready to slice more returns and he may have adjusted his return position slightly.

After getting broken the first 2 service games and down break point at 0-5 in the first set, Nadal then hit 3 serves to Fed's forehand in a row, winning 2 of the 3 points. He then got broken by losing the last 2 points after serving to Fed's backhand.

I believe Nadal made a tactical decision to serve more to Fed's forehand as the second set started. In his first service game, he held at love serving twice to Fed's backhand in the deuce court and twice to Fed's forehand in the ad court.

For the second set, Nadal ended up serving 17/17 serves to Fed's backhand in the deuce court and 12/17 to Fed's forehand in the ad court. He won 80% of his serves to Fed's forehand to the ad court.

Interestingly, he changed his pattern when he was serving for the set at 5-4. He served once to forehand, 3 times to the backhand, and hit 1 double fault.

In the third and fourth sets he went back to the backhand primarily, serving 85% to the backhand in the deuce court and 68% to the backhand in the ad court. This may have been because he picked up that Fed wasn't cheating as much or may have been due to other factors.

To me, the most interesting observation is the low percentage of first serves wide to the Federer forehand in the deuce court. I believe that this is Nadal's weakest placement and Federer now knows this.

Looking at Nadal's service motion and especially his starting position, I wonder if the extremely closed hip rotation in his setup doesn't make it very hard for him to rotate back to get into position to go wide in the deuce court.

I know that if I were Nadal's coach I would be very pleased with his performance and I would begin working like crazy on that serve wide in the deuce court. If he can master that, I think that he'd be able to beat anybody on any surface.

[lukman41985]

Your welcome, Jim.

Glenn--that analysis was awesome. Really interesting how Nadal went away from serving to the forehand in the second set, up 5-4. Thanks so much.

[jhm36]

Yeah, great post. Thanks for the all those details.

[jhm36]

Did a little digging in the stats at the ATP site and it turns out Federer had a higher perentage of points won on return than he has had all year playing Nadal.

Dubai: fed 36, nadal 28

Monte Carlo: fed 38, nadal 42

Rome: fed 33, nadal 32

Paris: fed 31 nadal 37

Wim: fed 38, nadal 29

So if you thought you were watching a match in which Federer was putting more pressure than ever before on Nadal's serve, and Nadal was putting the least, you were just about right on. Biggest difference in return precentage that they've had all year.

Interesting that the return precentage for both was unusually high in the Monte Carlo final. Wonder if that was true for the entire tournament. Something about the conditions?