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skip's avatar

Yes, and I also think Raducanu successfully made Fernandez pay for missing first serves, a key macro strategy imo, but unlike so many others she moved in to do so, rather than let the serve come back to her, increasing both the angle available and her margins for error while being assertive. Not only do you gain the advantage in doing so, if not the point outright, but you push the opponent to be more careful on their first as they *really* don't want to hit a second. Do you have any data on Raducanu's hit points on second serve returns? My sense of this is entirely seat of the pants.

It's also a tremendous credit to Raducanu that while she hit only 3 serves to the outside of the ad box all match long – to the Fernandez forehand – one was the pattern-busting ace on match point. That's a lot of savvy for someone so young in such a high pressure situation.

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James C's avatar

Thanks for the interesting writeup on Raducanu's game. I tallied up her games won on serve and return to find the percentage win rates across the historic run. Over the 10 matches, she won 89.5% of service games (80 of 90) and 52.4% of return games (41 of 81). Over the 7 MD matches these values were 89.2% (55 of 62) and 53.9% (29 of 56) respectively - about the same.

Her lowest return success came against Bencic, where she broke 3 times in 9 service games. Sakkari was her only other opponent across the 10 matches to hold more than 60% of service games against her. In MD, only three opponents managed more than one hold of serve when either on serve or up a break (Fernandez (4), Bencic (4), Voegele (3)). Bolkvadze also held six times when on serve or better in QR2.

Her lowest success on serve came against Voegele (7 holds out of 9) and against Fernandez (8 holds out of 10). Will be interesting to see if she can sustain her success on serve in future when players have more opportunity to scout (and she has to play on a range of surfaces).

As a general observation, the final felt like a product of two very well rounded and players who really understand the game, have few weaknesses, and have built into their subconscious a lot of good decision making around serve & return placement. Looking forward to years of them challenging for titles, along with Swiatek, Andreescu, Osaka, Barty, Sabalenka etc.!

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