2021 Scorecard: Stefanos Tsitsipas
Rate of improvement in key areas, what still needs work, looking ahead to 2022
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This is part of a new off-season series from The Racquet called ‘2021 Scorecard’. I always track a bunch of metrics for how fast some of the younger players on tour are improving in key areas and I’ll aim to post a few of these, for different players, in the next month while we get ready for the new season.
This week’s player: Stefanos Tsitsipas
Key areas of improvement: return of serve on hard courts, backhand defence on hard courts.
You can identify a few lower-priority areas where Tsitsipas can still improve. For example, he still falls substantially sideways (left) after his serve motion which can leave the line more open than it should be on occasion. But Tsitsipas’ serve (all surfaces) is usually a very strong part of his game (on both 1st and 2nd serve), and improvements here will probably be minor and incremental. It’s Tsitsipas’ return of serve on the faster courts, where he doesn’t have the time to stand deep and wind up big swings like he does on clay, and his backhand defensive ability (largely his lack of a functional slice out of that backhand corner to reset/construct points) that are the biggest issues right now.
Return Of Serve
On his beloved clay courts, Tsitsipas often has enough time to run around his backhand return to hit forehands, or has the time to hit comfortable, topspin backhand drives:
But two things often happen to Tsitsipas on hard courts.
He doesn’t have as much time to run around the backhand to find his stronger forehand.
When the server does find Tsitsipas’ backhand return, it’s much more rushed on a hard court. Tsitsipas has an extremely solid backhand, topspin drive when he has time to wind up, frankly one of the best on clay right now. But as soon as he’s forced to hit more reflexive returns he doesn’t have anywhere near the same consistency.
Tsitsipas however, to his credit, has had his best hard court return season this year by the overall numbers.
But if you look at his significant hard court losses this year…
vs Medvedev in Australian Open Semi’s
vs Zverev in Acapulco Final
vs Hurkacz in Miami Quarter’s
vs Tiafoe in Wimbledon 1st Rd (it’s grass not hard but still relevant here)
vs Opelka in Canadian Open Semi’s
vs Zverev in Cincinnati Semi’s
(there were a few more after this but his elbow injury, which he has now had surgery on, looked like an issue for some/most of them)
…while most of them are not bad losses (semi and final losses, mostly to big servers), what many of these matches had in common was Tsitsipas struggling to do enough on return when it mattered (or at all in the case of some of them).
If we get a bit more granular on Tsitsipas’ return game over the last three years, one of the problems becomes a bit more clear — his return depth depending on whether he hits a forehand and backhand.
These graphics are all for Tsitsipas’ 1st serve successful returns and they’re focusing on wide and T serves (both because Tsitsipas’ opponents only body serve him on avg about 9% of the time on 1st serve, and because it’s easy to isolate forehand and backhand on T and wide instead of body/central):
The reason the above matters comes down to a few things:
The shorter the return depth the more routine the server’s follow up shot (or ‘serve +1’) is going to be and the more likely they’ll be able to find a big, booming, point-ending forehand:
Because of that backhand return weakness, opponents rarely have to aim for risky serves close to the lines against Tsitsipas’ backhand. As long as they’re fast, they’re usually successful, which takes more pressure off the server in matchups vs Tsitsipas. Note: not all short returns are bad, they can often even be good if they force the server to net on a tough, low ball (Federer has done this well for years). But Tsitsipas’ short returns tend to sit up for put aways much more often than they provide difficult, low +1’s for the server.
Because of this wide performance difference between Tsitsipas’ forehand return depth (hitting short 1st serve returns on avg 25% of the time he puts a return in play) and his backhand return depth (hitting short returns about 34-35% of the time he puts a return in play), his opponents often have an obvious service edge in their matchup strategy with Tsitsipas. This is particularly pronounced for the AD side where Tsitsipas hits short returns off his backhand most often, which is also the side of the court where many of the most important points unfold in tennis. This also has a few second order effects like Tsitsipas occasionally over-covering his backhand side because he doesn’t want to be reaching to that side which then opens up space for the server to hit into his forehand side.
Simply put, Tsitsipas’ opponents will often be rewarded with a short, attackable ball (if it comes back at all) when they find that backhand return. And that’s exactly what they do: More than half of opponent’s 1st serves have gone into Tsitsipas’ backhand out of the three options (wide, middle, T) in the past three years.
As noted further up, Tsitsipas has found some better overall break rates and 1st and 2nd serve return points won performances in 2021 (his 2nd serve return numbers are especially encouraging at 52% return points won for hard courts this year). But his backhand 1st serve return isn’t the shot that’s responsible for that improvement, at least yet.
Part of this comes down to Tsitsipas’ backhand technique, which can be quite elaborate and can be rushed on the quicker courts…
