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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Oct 14, 2021Liked by Matthew Willis

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

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

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