Strange article. The point around controlling only 50% - what the heck does that even mean?! As a tennis player, you know there are many variables at play in each rally. This sort of simplistic analysis tells us pretty much nothing.
In my opinion, Nadal is great on clay because of his tenacity and ability to play the big points well. The slowness of the court helps him too as it prevents people hitting through him (I'll concede the article does mention that), and allows him to expose a less fit opponent (most are, when compared to Nadal) through extended rallies.
He also has a very reliable 2 handed backhand that he can impart a great deal of spin on (unlike Djokovic or Murray, who hit it relatively flat). This gives him consistency. He is also able to handle high bouncing balls on clay on the backhand much better than others, especially those with a single handed backhand.
For a baseliner, he has a very solid net game, and has a great sense of when to come in and finish the point. In my opinion, he has a better understanding of the "geometry" of the clay court, in that he knows when his opponent is at the point of no return. He then sneaks in to the net and finishes with a slice volley that drops dead on the clay.
Finally, he plays left handed (despite being right handed). Being lefty is a big advantage in tennis in general, because 3 of the 4 game ending point scores will, by definition, be served to your forehand side (40-0, 40-30, A-40). Then there's the southpaw spin, which is harder to handle for most right handed players. Combine the slower court, the point score advantage and Nadal's natural returning abilities (second only to Djok), and you make it very very tricky to win games.
Often ignored, but extremely relevant IMO, is Nadals tremendous ability to return basically anything he can reach is magnified at RG specifically (which is what we mean by clay, for the most part) by the really deep backcourts. RG has the most space between the baseline and the stands, and Nadal takes full advantage of it.
I’ve always wondered why players haven’t tried taking advantage of that, with maybe an underhanded serve, and for the first time Kyrgios tried that this Wimbledon and actually won the point.
It may not be as useful in RG because of the bounce, but the ability to draw Nadal closer to the Net during serve would be huge IMO.
Interesting point. Never thought about the area behind baseline, but it's a very valid point. I think you're correct that it gives him time, which given his speed lets him return even more.
I'm personally not a fan of the underhand serve (bit traditional in that regard!), but yeah, it does catch him out sometimes.
When I first saw this silly article, I thought it was literally the 2007 Onion article, "Rafael Nadal Credits French Open Success To Living In A World Of Clay."
Yes, the 50% control "analysis" was vapid, and said nothing new to the paragraph previous except for exchanging one noun for another. Then, I tend to read "moneyball" articles that are often quite good for baseball (e.g., on Fangraphs), and just expect more.
I've not analyzed it in depth, but against Federer on grass the other day he avoided hitting his backhand A LOT. It was as if only 20% of the court was in play for his backhand. His forehand is absolutely excellent, so perhaps that's part of it.
I'd have to watch him on clay again (haven't in a while) to see if the slower court means he can avoid hitting that backhand even more/more easily
Federer was ripping his backhand to Rafa's forehand - this is not what Federer usually does, and it unsettled Rafa. On grass, a ripped single handed backhand zips through the court and is hard to deal with.
Rafa usually runs round anything to his backhand so he can hit up the line to Fed's backhand (Fed's "weakness"). Yesterday this wasn't working due to the quality of Federer's backhand.
In all Federer was just playing too well yesterday - great game plan, executed very well. Rafa couldn't play his normal game against Federer's variety.
But great match overall. Can't believe they play like this at their age.
From what I witnessed, at times, Nadal was actively running around shots placed to his backhand. These were shots placed towards, almost, the corner of the court - perfect for a backhand reply, yet he was still trying to hit forehands. Sometimes it worked out quite well for him, other times not so much
To me Nadal's greatest strength is keeping the ball in play most players are not that consistent so make the error in long rallies and give him the point. Djokovic and Fedrer don't so he has to go for winners against them where when he hits good he beats when he doesn't he looses. In the semi he won the 2nd set when Fedrer started making errors. In 2nd and third Fedrer cut down on his errors and made Nadal go for winners which Nadal wasn't able to.
A bit off topic, but having followed tennis for the last 3 decades, i think the most striking thing on nadal and federer compared to previous generation is how much they improved technically throughout their career, even after their 30s ( after they both had won numerous grand slams). Nadal has improved on serve and volley, federer has improved on backend and serve. Watching young federer or young nadal vs today’s is extremely impressive.
i think that it’s something we should all take lessons from, and is actually very encouraging for everyone in every field: Age limits are being pushed in every dimensions, and no matter where you are in your career, there’s always new things to learn and new limits to overcome.
I’m curious to what extent this is just innuendo and FUD, and how much there’s legitimate speculation (if there could be such a thing) as to Nadal and/or Federer doping. I’ve never heard even a whisper of doping suspicion with Roger, and this is the first I’ve heard of Rafa, but I don’t follow the sport super closely so maybe there are storylines I’ve missed. I know there have been other high profile tennis players to get caught doping, but my impression was that it was uncommon among today’s athletes. The way your comment is worded suggests that many in the know suspect either or both of doping — is this accurate?
I will fully admit to having no inside knowledge, or any concrete beliefs about the subject, really! I only have read a few blog posts which seemed reasonable enough. Such as:
Some famous french tennisman (yannick noah, father of joachim, playing in NBA) accused rafa, as well as pretty much all pro spanish sportsmen in general, of doping, a very long time ago, at the time when nadal started to look overly dominant on the french open. Most people at the timr thought it was just pure jealousy or just a way to appear in the news. I now wonder if he didn’t have insider information, though.
This - "In any tennis match, you can control roughly 50% of the game: when the ball is in your half of the court." - which is the main thrust of the post, seems very simplistic. There are lots and lots of things that you can do to control more than the time that the ball is in your court. For example, unusual spin, tactics during a rally, etc.
I'd recommend reading "Roger Federer as Religious Experience" by David Foster Wallace - https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fed... - which, as well as being a superb piece of sports writing on its own terms, gives an excellent overview of the way that tactics play a huge role in tennis, rather than "the ball is only in your part of the court for 50% of the time, therefore that's what you can work with."
'And there’s that familiar little second of shocked silence from the New York crowd before it erupts, and John McEnroe with his color man’s headset on TV says (mostly to himself, it sounds like), "How do you hit a winner from that position?" And he’s right: given Agassi’s position and world-class quickness, Federer had to send that ball down a two-inch pipe of space in order to pass him, which he did, moving backwards, with no setup time and none of his weight behind the shot. It was impossible. It was like something out of "The Matrix." I don’t know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs.
Anyway, that’s one example of a Federer Moment, and that was merely on TV — and the truth is that TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.'
It's a tremendous piece of writing I've enjoyed many times over over the years but a troubling one.
As best I can tell, this is the actual shot described in the excerpt you quoted. It's great but perhaps DFW embellished a bit in the retelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDwG5rJVtdc
Yeah, I'd tracked that down as well, but one reason to be lenient perhaps is that he was writing before everything was available on YouTube, and was probably just going on memory, which is easy to unintentionally embellish over the years. Thanks for the link to the article of responses - looks interesting.
If you liked that piece, you will like David Foster Wallace's other piece on tennis as well [1]. It discusses how difficult it is to make it as a tennis pro.
Another key and massively important point with clay is that you can slide. Sliding properly where you stop as you hit the ball is a really tough skill to learn. Rafa has absolutely mastered this and it's a beauty to see.
Sliding combined with the ball slowing and bouncing higher lets you get balls much further out. It makes it possible to defend more balls and not be out of court as much.
On other surfaces like hardcourt, and grass it's really hard to slide. If you sprint out to a ball on those surfaces you will hit it on the run and end up a couple of steps beyond where the ball bounced. On clay with sliding you can really minimize these plays and maintain your position on court. Also, you can run so much harder on clay without fearing having to stop really hard which hurts on hard courts and significantly increases injury risk.
Rafa's movement on clay just makes him unbeatable.
It's all in the spin, and to a lesser extent Nadal's speed and mobility on clay. A high RPM top spin shot will kick forward and bounce high on clay to a greater extent than on a hard court, and it's extremely hard to deal with.
I have hit with some pro tour players on clay, once even a former world #1 player, and it's near impossible to play offensively against their spin unless you want to take every ball on the rise.
Also Nadal's flat serve is probably the weakest of the 3 greats, but the importance of a good flat serve is somewhat de-emphasized on clay.
Wordpress most definitely does not do this by default. Typing a period, a space, and then a capital letter to begin the next Steven ever does not start a new paragraph.
You can even see in the screenshots on the link you provided that new sentences do not become new paragraphs.
I remember a Time magazine front cover article on Bjorn Borg in the late seventies (get off my lawn). One quote that stuck with me went something like this: "Borg's dominance is really exaggerated on clay courts. Borg v an average tour player on clay is like the Detroit Lions v a high school football team". Maybe there's something about clay that encourages individual dynasties.
Edits: not any tour player, an average tour player, plus typo plus late seventies. Sorry
Clay and grass to a lesser extent are more extreme surfaces, and they benefit certain types of players. Hard courts are far more neutral and allow for a wider range of styles to be competitive.
Indeed. And as the original article mentioned, clay rewards a player who can "be a wall" and just keep getting the ball back and not beat himself. The article mentioned Nadal's heavy topspin, and I think Borg actually pioneered that. It's the only way to to hit powerful strokes with a margin of safety. The ball clears the net easily but then dips and doesn't go long.
This is hardly original, Nadal's game has been well-analysed for ages now. However, this is also why a lot of (most?) people prefer Federer to him: because Roger's game is more original and creative. It's a bit like Toyota vs Tesla: one will always sell more cars and make more money because it executes better, but that's not always the point.
Highly disagree with your analysis of why most people prefer Federer to him. Most people prefer Federer because Fed was successful first, then Nadal. So, people were used to seeing Federer dominate and then Nadal came in.
Nadal is far from a clay court specialist. 2x Wimbledon champ, 5x finalist. 3 US open titles, 1 Aussie open title and 4x finalist.
Your metaphor of car manufacturers really doesn’t do Nadal justice. It’s more like incumbents always have the advantage, and the challenger always has a harder fight.
In my experience whether people like Federer or Nadal has little to do with who was successful first, and much more to do with playing styles, but equally, the marketing images that have been built for them.
Federer is presented as this sublime talent, to whom tennis is effortless and natural. Someone who is calm and collected, and is the suave beatiful exponent of the sport. Nadal is presented as the fighting underdog who is extremely passionate and managed to overcome his natural talent and skill limitations with grit, determination, and hard work.
Which is kind of ironic, because once you set aside their playing styles, they both are almost exactly the opposite of their images. Federer was a highly volatile young player who greatly underperformed when he first turned pro, to the point he wanted to quit the sport, and took a long time to win his first GS. Nadal, on the other hand, burst into the scene almost immediately with a GS win, stuff came extremely naturally. Federer also puts far more hours into training and the gym, and has modeled his entire life aroundtennis, while Nadal, until recently didn’t come close. In fact, Nadal is famously quoted as saying that he didn’t go to the gym at all (I personally believe this was exaggerated, but it does have a grain of truth, in that his off court efforts, at least initially in his career, wasn’t close to the other guys).
>Nadal is famously quoted as saying that he didn’t go to the gym at all
You're taking it way out of context. That quote was referring to his arm muscularity, not how much he trains.
Everyone in the sport know that Nadal and Thiem are the hardest working tennis players outside of the court. They put in way more time than any other players.
Federer is the definition of "tennis comes easy". His movement, anticipation, and technique are just far above everyone elses. It's why he can return Isner's 145mph serves while standing right on the baseline.
Nadal is the definition of determination. He works hard for every single point, and never gives up. He will chase after every single ball, and play every point like it's his last. He's the John Wick of tennis.
I don't know what tennis you're watching because you are seriously delusional
> Most people prefer Federer because Fed was successful first
With that reasoning, we would still be worshiping Pete Sampras.
No, Federer's ball skills are just something else. Which is why his spiritual home is Wimbledon, where skill tends to win over doggedness, and why I suspect he will keep playing longer than Nadal - who is already struggling with serious physical injuries at a much lower age, because his game has to abuse the body more. That does not mean Nadal is not superb at what he does (his stats on returns are incredible), but it's something that's a bit harder to appreciate.
> Your metaphor of car manufacturers really doesn’t do Nadal justice.
Toyota makes excellent and reliable cars, their production and distribution skills changed the history of manufacturing, and they periodically innovate in big and small ways. Anyone who knows anything about making cars, knows they are excellent at what they do and maybe the best manufacturer ever by a number of stats. They just don't warm the heart in the same way as more creative makers.
>With that reasoning, we would still be worshiping Pete Sampras.
If he was still playing. Until he retired, Sampras was far and above the crowd favorite in every match after he reached 8 slams.
>hat does not mean Nadal is not superb at what he does (his stats on returns are incredible), but it's something that's a bit harder to appreciate.
Federer's skills are far and above, but I completely disagree that it's harder to appreciate Nada's play style. I find it hard to appreciate something that comes so easy to someone like Federer, compared to Nadal who works harder than anyone else in the sport to win every single point; he's always fighting till his last breath, chasing down every ball that he can. I appreciate his determination and attitude far and above Federer's pure talent.
I love watching them both. They're both humble, great champions and ambassadors for the sport.
I would think the reason most people prefer Federer (if there's even concrete evidence to back this up -- has anyone really done a survey of this question?) is that Federer plays the most aesthetically pleasing tennis. It's obviously subjective, but I suspect most people who like tennis like Federer's elegant style of one-handed backhand (which most plays don't do nowadays), his movement, his serve is devastating because of it's accuracy, his fakes and drop shots. It's just elegant to watch.
Nadal of course plays elegant and great shots too, but just less so in my opinion. Nadal has got a lot of wins by steamrolling his opponents with power and athleticism, particularly on clay.
I'd rather watch Federer destroy an opponent than Nadal, basically
If you take clay stats out of Nadal’s career, he’d go from being an all time great, to simply a very good player. His unrivalled dominance on clay is the defining element of his career.
Federer on the other hand has a much more well rounded career. He had more titles, more grand slams, and was dominant on both grass and hard courts. His clay stats are underwhelming, but it’s hard to tell if that’s because he’s not great on clay, or whether he was just unfortunate enough to be active at the same time as the greatest clay court player in history.
> [Federer's] clay stats are underwhelming, but it’s hard to tell if that’s because he’s not great on clay, or whether he was just unfortunate enough to be active at the same time as the greatest clay court player in history.
Clay is undoubtedly Federer's worst surface regardless of Nadal, but he has lost to Nadal in the French Open all 5 times they've met, and they've met in the final most of those times, so probably without Nadal he would have even more grand slams.
Yes but if you remove the French open victories from Nadal total (down to 6) total both Djokovic (down to 14) and Federer (down to 19) have more than twice (or even 3x times) the number of grand slam Victories. (Same for M1000)
Selectively removing clay court titles is not good statistics. Djokovic has 10 hard court victories, and Federer has 11. You don't call Djokovic a hard court specialist.
6 non-clay grand slam titles - Only 20 people across history, other than Nadal, have more than 6 grand slams on any surface. If you add 2 for RG averaging 2 a grand slam, only 7 people other than him in history have 8 GS titles. I think that is enough proof that he is much more than a clay court specialist.
You can't take out the clay, it's a proper surface in tennis. Nadal is the only one of the big 3 to have 2 of each slam surface type. We can point out useless stats all day but there's nothing you can say that can take away the fact that Nadal is in the running to be the GOAT and he has a chance to pass Federer's slam count
> (most?) people prefer Federer to him
Any numbers to back that up? Nadal is not sheer force. Coming into the Wimbeldon semi-final with Roger, he had better serve statistics than Federer himself. Being able to curve the ball back into the court from outside the net (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HD8BvwdlhI) is sheer creativity.
Nadal has adapted his game a lot over the years, and people just don't give him the deserved credit. The good thing is that he doesn't really care, and the record speaks for itself.
The primary reason is that Nadal simply generates more topspin, which has been known for a long time, and the spin of the ball has more impact on a clay court. Nadal's grip is "full western" while Federer and Djokovic both have more traditional forehand grips.
The data is pretty difficult to obtain, but there's some great analysis on Nadal done by Craig O'Shannessy. Craig O' Shannessy is Djokovic's strategy coach and I think a pioneer to the game. He has plenty of posts about Nadal, here is just to get you started, some of the articles are members only, but there are plenty of great ones that aren't..
It's obvious that it simply has good baseliners (players likelier to win a point once the ball is in play) and big 2nd servers at the top. But there's no data to support this, other than my gut feel of seeing big3 and Isner in there. But what about Kohlschreiber?
While I am sure he does better work for his clients, he seems to have access to shot-by-shot data which I think is most valuable.
I don't know of any tournament offering shot-by-shot data in their live scores (it's usually just the last hit in a point that's tracked by statistics, which I don't think says enough).
If anyone knows of shot-by-shot data for just a single tournament, that'd be great to see and explore :)
Djokovic has a case for best tennis player ever with his winning record head to head over Federer and Nadal. Federer has a losing record against both. He racked up a lot of his titles before Nadal and Djokovic became world champion players.
Federer is significantly (5/6 years) older than Nadal and Djokovic, which makes it difficult to compare them in "all time" terms based on head-to-head results.
Federer and Djokovic have played 47 times and 15 times in grand slams. That ties Djokovic-Nadal for most ever grand slam meetings. That should be enough head to head to make a comparison.
Funnily enough I think the best player of all time is Novak Djokovic. He has 15 major titles to his name and currently holds a winning record vs both Nadal and Federer. All three have comparable winning percentages over their careers. I think people pencil in Federer as the best just because he is older than Nadal and Djokovic.
They do it because he's currently won more majors than they have. A case can be made for each of them that they all should hold the GOAT title, but it's hard to settle right now.
I think age matters, if Djoker is playing at the same level at the age of 37 then he might be considered the best. The best player is the one who has won the most tournaments and that is Federer. Djoker has a really good chance of catching up though.
In my opinion, Nadal is great on clay because of his tenacity and ability to play the big points well. The slowness of the court helps him too as it prevents people hitting through him (I'll concede the article does mention that), and allows him to expose a less fit opponent (most are, when compared to Nadal) through extended rallies.
He also has a very reliable 2 handed backhand that he can impart a great deal of spin on (unlike Djokovic or Murray, who hit it relatively flat). This gives him consistency. He is also able to handle high bouncing balls on clay on the backhand much better than others, especially those with a single handed backhand.
For a baseliner, he has a very solid net game, and has a great sense of when to come in and finish the point. In my opinion, he has a better understanding of the "geometry" of the clay court, in that he knows when his opponent is at the point of no return. He then sneaks in to the net and finishes with a slice volley that drops dead on the clay.
Finally, he plays left handed (despite being right handed). Being lefty is a big advantage in tennis in general, because 3 of the 4 game ending point scores will, by definition, be served to your forehand side (40-0, 40-30, A-40). Then there's the southpaw spin, which is harder to handle for most right handed players. Combine the slower court, the point score advantage and Nadal's natural returning abilities (second only to Djok), and you make it very very tricky to win games.