Sinner and Karatsev Dominate

Sinner and Schwartzman's serve/return mismatch, Karatsev's brutal consistency

Oct 24, 2021

Sinner d Schwarztman: 6-2, 6-2

A complete and utter serve/return mismatch. While Schwartzman is one of the best returners on tour, Sinner’s recent improvements in 1st serve potency, coupled with Schwartzman’s own lack of a first serve weapon, made this extremely one sided.

After the first set, 67% of Sinner’s 1sts serves had gone unreturned compared to just 5%(!) of Schwartzman’s. After two whole sets it got a little better for Schwartzman, but not by much:

Unreturned 1st serves overall:

Sinner: 59%
Schwartzman: 9%

Avg 1st serve return position:

Sinner: 1.1m behind baseline
Schwartzman: 1.7m behind baseline

This serve potency differential manifested in all sorts of ways, but most importantly and simply it meant that Sinner earned a lot of free points and Schwartzman practically none, and that Sinner got to keep his aggressive court position up on the baseline for most of the match when points did develop past the serve, whereas Schwartzman was forced to make his home deep in the court near the tournament logo:

(Still) Sinner’s home today up on the baseline. Schwartzman’s home today on the Antwerp sign.

(GIF) This happened again and again. Schwartzman (far end) would hit a serve, Sinner would easily redirect a return central and deep onto the baseline to take control of the point. Sinner would get to stay up on the baseline and Schwartzman would get pushed further and further back. So far back in this instance that Sinner could exploit the angle with this great forehand. Sinner’s greater weight of shot in what were often cross court backhand exchanges meant that it was usually he who could change direction or look to press first rather than Schwartzman, as you can see here with Sinner easing the backhand up the line. Schwartzman had nearly zero serving advantage today.

(GIF) One of Schwartzman’s (far end) favourite serves is this slider 1st serve out wide on the Deuce side, and it had worked well against his previous opponents this week (Brooksby, Nakashima, Murray), but Sinner just eat it up all match long. Sinner did exactly what he should be doing on return like this, aiming deep and central, jamming his opponent up (similar to what Raducanu did for most of the US Open), patiently but aggressively keeping control of the rally and then attacking the right ball when it comes. Schwartzman usually doesn’t mind getting into these backhand exchanges vs most opponents considering how solid that shot is, but Sinner’s greater weight of shot and ease at changing direction from cross court to down the line meant this dynamic almost always went in Sinner’s favour today. Sinner, with his Nalbandian-esque wrist control on that backhand, can be hard to read with that shot.

Unfortunately for Schwartzman, even when you take the serve performance differential out of the equation, Sinner was still superior from the baseline in neutral, or even initially disadvantaged, positions:

(GIF) Sinner (far end) hits a soft 2nd serve here and Schwartzman gets to play a relatively rare aggressive return into Sinner’s backhand corner. But because Sinner is so complete from the baseline (ie he has both a brilliant forehand and backhand), he still doesn’t give up rally control or any positional advantage. Sinner gets great depth on the backhand and then gets to work out-rallying Schwartzman until the Argentine is pushed back behind the Antwerp logo once again. And one of the bad things about being 5ft 7 a la Schwartzman, is that the trajectory of your ball gets more and more unkind the deeper he moves. Schwartzman generally hits his backhand pretty flat, and from this far back in the court, from his 5ft 7 vantage point, physics is never in his favour (hence the backhand miss half way up the net).

Rally winners:

Sinner: 11
Schwartzman: 1

Sinner out-served Schwartzman, out-returned Schwartzman (although those two things heavily overlap), and out-rallied Schwartzman on the back of both serving and non-serving positions. This resulted in extremely one sided point length stats, across each category:

I’ve written quite a bit recently about Sinner’s serving improvements this year as he moved away from the pinpoint stance he tried for a few years, and back to his platform stance that he grew up with:

The caveat here is that Sinner’s serve is always going to be more effective on indoor hard courts than some of the slower and outdoor surfaces out there (I’ll keep track of this into next year to see how much of an improvement he’s made overall). But the good signs for his serve effectiveness continued with today’s final, albeit in conditions that may well be flattering. I’ll do some more digging on this but it looks to me like Sinner’s reversion to his original platform stance has allowed the following things on his 1st serve (my guess is that the more fluid motion of his natural platform stance, as opposed to sweeping that back leg forwards mid-motion in pinpoint, is helping these things along):

A more accurate and consistent toss.
More aggressive placement.

Sinner’s 1st serve placement today was exceptional, landing bombs close to the lines point after point. If I had to guess what Sinner and coach Piatti are working on, and have been working on, the most over the last few months, it’s this.

Stark difference in 1st serve placement between the two players. Sinner (right) going all out for the lines and Schwartzman (left) playing it much safer.

Today’s final was abnormally good, even for Sinner’s recent form, with the Italian hitting his highest ace rate of his tour level career so far at 18%.

An excellent performance from the young Italian, who is in a league of his own progress-wise compared to the rest of his age range right now:

enrico maria riva @enricomariariva

Most ATP titles for players born 2000 and after Sinner 5 (+1*) Korda 1 Seyboth Wild 1 Cerúndolo J. 1 Alcaraz 1 *Next Gen title

Karatsev d Čilić: 6-2, 6-4

I’m not going to go into quite as much detail for this match because the reasons for the result were simpler, but I do want to give a boat load of credit to Karatsev. There has been a fair amount of recent skepticism around the Russian as the season has progressed.

Ed Salmon @fogmount

It mystifies me that the prevailing narrative about Karatsev seems to be “he’s an elite player in a slump” rather than “he’s a fundamentally error-prone player who had a hot streak early this year”.

Karatsev, after the incredible breakthrough in Australia to start the year, lost a few early rounds against tough opponents and all of a sudden he was faced with various ‘flash in the pan’ narratives. But Karatsev’s last few weeks on tour show signs of mmm-blocking out the haters.

While Karatsev’s brand of tennis looks simple, it’s really testament to how technically sound both his groundstrokes are (especially suited to these quick, indoor hard courts), coupled with impeccable footwork, that he manages to pull off such an illusion. Because Karatsev’s level this week, and style of tennis, are not even slightly easy to pull off.

There are two things I want to highlight in this matchup today:

Firstly Cilic (far end) hits a brilliant body serve right onto the line (a consistent strategy today), but Karatsev deals with it extremely well with a backhand return which in turn rushes Cilic’s own backhand (missing the court by about three metres). This point is a nice microcosm of Karatsev’s superior return performance today — Karatsev won more than double the return points of Cilic, 37% to Cilic’s 18%. Also of note here is the reproducibility of their respective backhands. Karatsev has a flat but very solid backhand technique. Cilic’s backhand on the other hand is a contender for one of the more inconsistent strokes that has existed at the top of the men’s game. It’ll usually either be incredible or very error-prone with little in-between.

Cilic’s backhand featured heavily in most of the break points he faced and lost today:

I really liked this play from Karatsev (far end), which he pulled off numerous times today, where instead of going for too much when pushed wide by the Cilic forehand, Karatsev just hits it central, hard and deep back to Cilic’s baseline, never flirting with the sidelines. Cilic can really struggle when rushed on central backhands like this.

Just about any time that Karatsev (this end) and Cilic started exchanging backhands cross court it was not good news for Cilic. Karatsev’s ability to take the ball early while finding consistent depth and pace of shot is seriously impressive when he’s on. Cilic again forced into another backhand miss by over a metre rather than inches.

One of the most impressive examples of Karatsev finding more consistent depth and pace of shot than his opponent, even when under pressure, came when Karatsev faced his only break point of the match while serving for the title: