My Kingdom for a First Serve and a Forehand

Written by: Tennischiro on 22nd November 2011

My Kingdom for a First Serve and a Forehand |

The first round of round robin play is over and a little more is clear. If you want to see the possible scenarios of how Federer or Nadal can qualify for the semis tomorrow, go to Sharko’s summary:

http://www.atpworldtour.com/News/Tennis/2011/11/47/London-Finals-Tuesday-Briefing.aspx

If you want to understand a little more about how they decide the tie-breakers when the records look equal at the end of the week, see the full description in the standings at:

http://www.atpworldtour.com/Rankings/Finale%20SF%20Qualifications.aspx.

But the main thing is, these are by and large great tennis matches. The one player I thought was least vulnerable of the recently wounded (Fish, Djokovic, Berdych and Murray), is now the one who may pull out. Murray injured his groin in practice last week and was unsure as of Monday night if he would be able to continue. But don’t take anything away from David Ferrer. He gave his usual, unheralded spectacular performance and was more than the Brit could handle in front of his home crowd. He entered the match as perhaps the biggest underdog and pulled off the only straight set victory. He was able to hold Murray to just 49% of his service points. Pretty good effort indoors, for Ferrer at least. And as the only straight sets victory, he has an important advantage in the standings as the week progresses toward Saturday’s semifinals. (See Tom Nash’s detailed write-up of the match: https://archive.10sballs.com/2011/11/21/murray-blinks-twice-and-it-is-over/).

The other three matches were in doubt even right up to the very last game or at least the next to last game. Tsonga recovered from a slow start that saw him lose the first 4 games of the match; but he came back strong in the second set winning 12 of the first 13 points on his serve and breaking Roger in the 3rd and 7th games. It looked like Federer took a little bit of a Goolagong “walkabout” in that 3rd game making two consecutive unforced errors off his forehand to give Jo-Wilfred the critical break. This momentary lapse was characteristic of the weaker Federer that he seemed to have banished during his good run at Basel and Paris. Physically, he looked great, but that “walkabout” makes me hope the “Twins” are sleeping well this week. But he righted the ship in the third set; they settled into a battle of service winners and aces and groundstroke winners until the 5th game when Tsonga missed his first 6 first serves giving Roger a look at a 93mph second serve for the go ahead break, but it was not to be. Tsonga held as 14 of the next 15 points went to the server until Jo-Wilfred served at 4-5. Tsonga started off with a volley error and a double fault before missing his first serve at 0-30; the “old Roger” made a move left to attack the second with his forehand and gained the triple breaker with vintage Federer footwork and a blistering forehand winner. Tsonga came back with 135mph to escape the first match point, but Roger was able to get the 140 mph 15-40 serve back short and Tsonga was drawn up to the net and out of position where Roger passed him for the match. The Frenchman had made a great recovery considering the hole he started out in. He will be very hard to handle later in the week as he gets more comfortable in that arena. Federer was a little lucky that Tsonga didn’t take advantage of the 4/5 first serves he missed in the third game of the 3rd set. I think Roger will handle Nadal in the RR play, but he will have to eliminate any “walkabouts” if he has to face the quality I saw tonight from Djokovic and Berdych.

The Berdych-Djokovic match was a great match. I knew the outcome when I watched the second and third sets (I put TennisTV on pause after the first set and went out for a few hours before I finished watching the match) and still it was gripping television for me because they were hitting the ball so well. Berdych was definitely the aggressor, but Djokovic was doing his best impression of the “Elastic Man” from “The Fantastic Four” as he moved from side to side tracking down Tomas’s heavy artillery, and I do mean heavy. Berdych is a huge guy and doesn’t get nearly enough credit for how well he moves and sets up to hit his shots. He is clearly the best in the game at turning defense into offense. It has been a new mantra the last few years, and for a while it seemed Nadal was the best in this regard; but now, I think Murray and Djokovic have used their strength, reach, and speed to take it to a new level. The Murray that I saw destroy Nadal in Tokyo about 5 weeks back was in the same league as Djokovic, but if he is nursing an injured groin, there is no way he can maintain that level.

I’m not sure what you are seeing on The Tennis Channel, but the views they are using on TennisTV allow you to see the speed of every serve that is recorded by the radar gun, in or out, except that it does not show a speed for most serves in the net. Sometimes I have a hard time maintaining my focus when I am watching a tennis match (hey, I’ve been doing it for over 50 years!) and it helps me to chart the match. With the clear sign on the London court, I decided to try to record the speed of every serve to get a better sense of just how fast they were serving and how healthy the suspect arms might be. (If we’ve figured out how to post the pdf, you can see the charts I made of three of the RR matches: ********************) I look for speed of first and second serves and how it influenced where the service breaks came; with these players indoors, you know most points should go to the server. If you want to try it, just draw a few columns on a piece of paper for first serve, 2nd serve, comment and a column for points won by the receiver; use one half the page for one player and the other half for his opponent. Mark the break points and follow the set’s progress for each server down the page; you will see where the patterns are emerging and when one player is beginning to struggle with his service games. On TennisTV, you will a number of other resources from Hawk-Eye: rally hit point, shot placement, serve placement, graphic replay of the point with mph of each shot, etc. as well as a full play-by-play description of the match with mph breakdown of every shot. These resources are not just fun; they are also quite instructive.

Anyway, Berdych got off to as good a start as Federer, winning the first 4 games and Novak truly looked a little rusty. But my charting showed that he routinely served in the mid 120’s all through the match, especially when he needed to. It remains to be seen whether he was really ready for the stress of a 160 minute match. We won’t know that until he plays Ferrer on Wednesday night. Tomas blinked just a little in the 5th game and Djokovic got one break back; now he was in the match. He nearly got the second break back but Tomas erased 3 break points in the 4-2 game with three big first serves including 2 aces. Berdych closed out the set but Djokovic immediately broke in the second game of the 2nd set as Tomas missed 9 or 14 first serves. In the meantime, Novak was making 15 of his first 16 first serves in the 2nd set and going on to close out the set in style with 2 backhand winners and 2 aces to set a tone for the final set.

They started out holding comfortably, but they were absolutely pummeling the ball. Berdych got away with making just 1/6 first serves in the 2-2 game and the sixth game started with a net cord in his favor. Then he made three huge forehands to give him the break. But again in the 7th game, he made just one first serve, doubled twice and missed a forehand for the break. Berdych did see the first match point at 5-6, 30-40 thanks to a Djokovic double, but after a long rally, he missed a forehand. Through the 2nd and 3rd set, Tomas seemed to miss many down the line and inside out forehands wide to the right. Some of the rallies were absolutely breathtaking and I think Berdych should have taken the match, but the wide forehands took their toll in the tie-breaker and Djokovic added another victory to his already impressive total for 2011, 7-3 in the breaker. The TennisTV commentators, Robbie Koenig and Jason Goodall seemed puzzled as to why Berdych didn’t take those key balls crosscourt which seemed to be his preferred shot. They do a great job of adding insight where appropriate and keeping their comments short and sweet most of the time; of course they have something to say during the change of ends, but that is so superior to listening to commercials, that alone is worth the subscription fee.

The Fish/Nadal match was also a story of missed forehands and missed first serves and missed opportunities. Fish started off looking uncomfortable in his surroundings and dropped his serve the first game. He managed to right himself somewhat and start to play by the end of the first set, but he dropped another service break at 2-4 to seal his fate in that initial set. Then he started off the 2nd set serving well, making 9/10 first serves and asserting himself in the front court, breaking Nadal’s serve on an approach and volley and getting up 0-3. He actually had 6 more break chances, but couldn’t convert. He faced one break point himself in the 5-3 game, but finished off the set with 117mph Serve-and-Volley point, a 132mph Serve and a 135mph approach-and-volley point.

Nadal did not look himself and, indeed, at 2-0 up in the 3rd, Nadal took a bathroom break. The timing of this break seemed to upset and energize Mardy. We have since learned Nadal was suffering from an upset stomach and perhaps even some food poisoning. He did seem to be missing uncharacteristically. Mardy responded by breaking back, making 6/8 first serves to hold and breaking again to go up 3-2. Then missed volleys and a miss of his trusty backhand put him down 0-40. Mardy had another break chance at 3-3 and Rafa had one at 4-5, but the match came down to the 3rd set tie-breaker. Mardy missed a lot of practice with his hamstring problems in the last month and he did not look nearly as sharp or as fit as he did during his stellar run this summer; he was missing a lot more than he had been through the US Open series. There were moments where he really seemed to have the answer for Nadal, but the inconsistency that had been overcome this summer would get him in the end. At 0-1 in the tie-breaker, Mardy missed his first serve and then made an error on a forehand. That was all Nadal needed as he won all the points on his serve in the TB. That’s two matches in a row when he was oh so close; he had to withdraw in Paris after having a pair of match points in the 2nd set against Juan Monaco. His injuries didn’t seem to be a factor, but he has to be really sharp to have a chance against Tsonga or Federer. Nadal, on the other hand, dodged a bullet. If he really did have food poisoning, it was a helluva performance and he may be much better against Federer and Tsonga. I think he will have to be just to have a chance against them, much less the level displayed by Berdych and Djokovic. Of course, he has beaten all of these players before so you should never sell him short.

I am going to stick with Federer to win in the end, but I think he will have to play his best to beat Berdych in the semis and Djokovic in the finals who will probably have beaten Tsonga in the semis. The groin injury has to cost Murray by the end of the week, if not sooner.

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Topics: Berdych, djokovic, Fish, nadal