9 Comments
Oct 15, 2021Liked by Matthew Willis

Thank you so much for this insightful analysis. You’re helping us deeply understand the sport we love.

I have a question about this part:

“This resulted in an abnormally high number of longer points but backfired in part because Dimitrov, thanks to his more natural rally weapons”

What does ‘Natural rally weapons’ mean here?

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Thanks Hann. Natural rally weapons is just a complicated way of saying Dimitrov has an easier time hitting point ending forehands than Medvedev when locked in a rally.

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Oct 14, 2021Liked by Matthew Willis

Somehow these analyses keep getting better. So interesting and well presented, thanks.

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Thanks Mark!

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Oct 14, 2021Liked by Matthew Willis

Thanks for another great analysis, Matt. It was an incredible performance from Dimitrov and he showed a lot of heart as well as tactical insightfulness in getting that win. Medvedev also wasn't serving as well as he did in previous matches (54% 1st serve in compared to 60% and 58% for R2 and R3), but I don't know how much of a factor that was--would be interested to hear your opinion on this.

It's also an interesting weakness of Medvedev's that he dislikes generating his own pace. Is that just a feature of his play style or are there deeper technique issues involved? I would think that injecting pace is a vital skill for any tennis player (as a lowly rec player I'm being made to work on this all the time by my coach), so I'm surprised he isn't able to do this more often when required. I imagine he would fare much better on clay if he could become comfortable doing so.

TIA

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Thanks Ronnie. The 1st serve in % is a funny old stat because there's not a lot of correlation between first serve in % and match outcome within reasonable bounds. It's more important when those 1st serves land rather than the overall number. That said, when Medvedev is struggling to win 2nd serve pts more than usual like he was vs Dimitrov, that % becomes more important especially in key moments. I think Medvedev can certainly have better serving days than he did that day. RE the generating pace issue, it's mostly technical, Medvedev doesn't have a lot of shoulder or arm strength relative to most elite tennis players. Therefore he's more comfortable redirecting power rather than generating it (one of his biggest problems on clay).

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Is this scarcity of slicing players a direct consequence of the new sliding, open stance defensive technique?

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An interesting question. I think for some players who have grown up playing a lot of their backhands open stance, for both single and double handers, the slice may be less natural because of the difference in footwork, yeah. Tsitsipas is a good example of this as he grew up on clay and doesn't seem to have drilled his slice much at all when he was a junior. This has resulted in him regularly playing open stance defensive slices (ie the same stance he'd use for his defensive single hander topspin) which is one of the reasons his slice is ineffectual relative to some of the better ones on tour (plus some odd swing mechanics in his slice). This is less of a problem for double handers because it's much easier to defend with two hands on a backhand.

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I'll write something about this soon btw

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