I meant to comment earlier but thoughts on Davydenko/Meddy. At his best on hard like Meddy but improved on clay and had done great results. I watched a few of his clay highlights ( Monte Carlo, RG) recently thinking about this. Right up on baseline, cutting off spin angles with his quick feet and whippy swings. I do find Meddy is too far back ( bigger swing?). Can he adapt? Take it earlier? Reduce the swing? No one talks about Davydenko anymore but as a flatter hitter against more spinny balls he had huge success. Thoughts?
Yeah it's a really interesting comparison Susie, and one hopefully Medvedev will be looking at. I think the biggest difference is mainly that Davydenko was simply more compact, both in terms of his strokes and general lanky-ness when it comes to Medvedev. Medvedev has to put such huge swings and body weight into his forehand especially compared to Davydenko's very efficient motion. I think this allowed Davydenko to do more with the ball on his forehand side, taking it early as you say, on clay compared to Medvedev. But I'd be happy for Meddy to prove me wrong as he progresses on this surface. I'm not as down on Medvedev on clay as everyone seems to be, even himself!, but he seems to have completely shifted his mindset towards negativity and self-defeatism between that great run in 2019 (beating Tsitsipas and Djokovic in MC and reaching final in barcelona) on clay to now.
I noticed that there is a set of young players - Tsitsipas, Auger-Aliassime, Mussetti, Thiem - who move back on a substantial amount of their second serve returns, be interesting to hear your thoughts on that.
I put everyone in opposite Djokovic since I figured you might as well compare them to best returned. Happy to see one of my fave youngsters, Jannik Sinner, has almost identical return position including, like Djokovic, very little variation in position.
Also interesting that while Federer (unsurprising) and Murray (a little surprising) have more aggressive return positions than Djokovic, the only youngster I put in with a more aggressive position was de Minaur (and he varies more, sometimes less aggressive on second sometimes more).
Be good if someone put a number on distance from baseline on the four return positions so one could quickly scan everyone's relative aggression though the graphics are fantastic for seeing the variation.
Novak has actually been experimenting with deep and short return positions, as has Sinner recently. I don't think there's one correct way and much will depend on the players technique and grips on both sides. Wawrinka has always found a great balance imo, he stands in on first serve returns and tries to block and then stands back for the slower 2nd serve and tries to drive it. I think that strategy will be fairly common on tour but many of the younger guys as you noted like Nadal's deep return position for both. I'll write a post on it soon.
Terrific first post; great link to the fogmount article which has much more of interest related to bounce and hard court variation. I assume all serves are relatively flat in terms of topspin and so this analysis isn't relevant to servers on clay.
I meant to comment earlier but thoughts on Davydenko/Meddy. At his best on hard like Meddy but improved on clay and had done great results. I watched a few of his clay highlights ( Monte Carlo, RG) recently thinking about this. Right up on baseline, cutting off spin angles with his quick feet and whippy swings. I do find Meddy is too far back ( bigger swing?). Can he adapt? Take it earlier? Reduce the swing? No one talks about Davydenko anymore but as a flatter hitter against more spinny balls he had huge success. Thoughts?
Yeah it's a really interesting comparison Susie, and one hopefully Medvedev will be looking at. I think the biggest difference is mainly that Davydenko was simply more compact, both in terms of his strokes and general lanky-ness when it comes to Medvedev. Medvedev has to put such huge swings and body weight into his forehand especially compared to Davydenko's very efficient motion. I think this allowed Davydenko to do more with the ball on his forehand side, taking it early as you say, on clay compared to Medvedev. But I'd be happy for Meddy to prove me wrong as he progresses on this surface. I'm not as down on Medvedev on clay as everyone seems to be, even himself!, but he seems to have completely shifted his mindset towards negativity and self-defeatism between that great run in 2019 (beating Tsitsipas and Djokovic in MC and reaching final in barcelona) on clay to now.
You tweeted this out which is fascinating:
http://on-the-t.com/2021/04/17/Return-Impact-H2H/
I noticed that there is a set of young players - Tsitsipas, Auger-Aliassime, Mussetti, Thiem - who move back on a substantial amount of their second serve returns, be interesting to hear your thoughts on that.
I put everyone in opposite Djokovic since I figured you might as well compare them to best returned. Happy to see one of my fave youngsters, Jannik Sinner, has almost identical return position including, like Djokovic, very little variation in position.
Also interesting that while Federer (unsurprising) and Murray (a little surprising) have more aggressive return positions than Djokovic, the only youngster I put in with a more aggressive position was de Minaur (and he varies more, sometimes less aggressive on second sometimes more).
Be good if someone put a number on distance from baseline on the four return positions so one could quickly scan everyone's relative aggression though the graphics are fantastic for seeing the variation.
Novak has actually been experimenting with deep and short return positions, as has Sinner recently. I don't think there's one correct way and much will depend on the players technique and grips on both sides. Wawrinka has always found a great balance imo, he stands in on first serve returns and tries to block and then stands back for the slower 2nd serve and tries to drive it. I think that strategy will be fairly common on tour but many of the younger guys as you noted like Nadal's deep return position for both. I'll write a post on it soon.
Ow thats great. Subscribing in 3, 2, 1... Good job Matt
Thanks Flavio
Terrific first post; great link to the fogmount article which has much more of interest related to bounce and hard court variation. I assume all serves are relatively flat in terms of topspin and so this analysis isn't relevant to servers on clay.
Thanks! Yeah fogmount and Rod Cross' work is great on these topics