The Full Shapo
Shapovalov handily beats a crumbling Zverev: serve, return and rally analysis
Shapovalov d Zverev: 6-3, 7-6(5), 6-3
A huge win for Shapovalov. His first Top 5 win since his breakout win over Nadal in Montreal back in 2017. Shapovalov will play Nadal next round.
A week or so ago, when writing analysis for Canada’s ATP Cup win, I wrote this:
Shapovalov’s forehand is always going to do most of the damage, but his backhand also needs to not let him down in order to set up enough opportunities to hit those forehands. Either:
making backhand returns and playing the right, quite high margin backhands in rallies, in order to get the opportunity to hit the big aggressive forehand strike that would likely end the point.
or…
hitting big but aggressive spots on 2nd serve returns to take control of the point immediately.
The more returns Shapovalov makes, and the fewer cheap backhand rally errors he makes, the more opportunities he has to strike aggressive forehands, which no one on tour has an answer for when he’s playing well. The key for Shapovalov isn’t hitting bigger, it’s for his game to evolve to the point where he calmly enables his strengths as much as possible. This sounds obvious but it’s much harder to execute on in the moment as a player.
This win over Zverev was a masterclass from Shapovalov in how to enable his own strengths as often as possible. To be quite clear here, Zverev did not play well. The German’s 2nd serve and forehand were poor for large portions of this match. But as with any match, it’s rare that all the fault for playing badly lies on one player, and Shapo did plenty to exacerbate Zverev’s issues.
The Return
Today was Zverev’s lowest ace rate in a hard court Slam match (3.4%) since his Slam debut vs Kohlschreiber in 2015 as an 18 year old (1.4%).
Shapovalov also put:
44/66 (66%) 1st serve returns back in play.
21/21 (100%) 2nd serve returns back in play
These are great numbers. Not so much on the 2nd serve because Zverev has really struggled with that shot all week, but the 1st serve return performance was brilliant.
Shapovalov hit more blocked 1st serve returns than driven 1st serve returns in the first two sets. And it paid off.
— ↑ Great deep blocked 1st serve return from Shapovalov (far end). Forces Zverev to play a forehand (his much weaker shot today) off the back foot and erases all serving advantage. That’s not all though, Shapovalov faced with a backhand goes big, but safe, into the Zverev forehand on the next shot. I like everything about how he played this point.
— ↑ Same again. Shapo (far end) finds Zverev’s weaker forehand with a good blocked return drawing Zverev into net (where the German was very uncomfortable today).
— ↑ Another great deep blocked return from Shapovalov (far end) which helped break Zverev to start set 2. The great thing about points like this is that Shapo is so patient. The return enables him to get his forehand into play early in the point (from his backhand corner) and sets about targeting the Zverev forehand.
— ↑ Again and again. Shapo near end this time.
The reasons these blocks are important are 1. they force Zverev to have to generate pace on his forehand, which, when that shot isn’t in form, is an area he struggles with. 2. gives Shapovalov opportunities to work his forehand into the point and take control of rallies. No one on earth can live with Shapo’s forehand when it’s firing, but he has to get into good positions to play enough of them for that shot to be as effective as it can be.
And on 2nd serve return, Shapovalov executed his strategy well even though Zverev’s serve helped out quite a bit:
Zverev won just 28% of his 2nd serve points which is the second lowest in the last 12 months.
The serve
As I mentioned above, Shapo’s backhand does fill up a lot of highlight reels, but it’s his forehand that does most of the offensive damage. Shapo served well enough today (apart from vaguely concerning double digit double faults) that he got to hit *a lot* of forehands:
You are not reading that wrong. Shapovalov only had to hit one backhand as his follow up shot to a 2nd serve in the entire match (and it didn’t come until set 3!). Shapo’s serve did an excellent job of setting up his forehand strength throughout the match
Shapo mostly matched Zverev’s 1st serve pace and hit 10mph faster on avg than Zverev on 2nd serve (Shapovalov 2nd serve avg: 100mph or 160kph to Zverev’s 90mph or 145kph). A reminder that Zverev is 5-6 inches taller than Shapo.
— ↑ And even on the less common occurrences where Zverev (near end) managed to find Shapovalov’s backhand with his return, Shapo’s shot selection for most of the match was excellent. Aggressive, but high margin, cross court into the malfunctioning Zverev forehand.
Rally
All of the above meant that Shapovalov got to play his forehand strength incredibly often as rallies developed. And even when Shapovalov did have to play his backhand (he hit 102 backhands to 165 forehands today overall, or 62% forehands), that shot held up excellently making just 5 backhand unforced errors. Again for emphasis, it matters much less that Shapovalov hits winners or forcing shots off his backhand than it does that his backhand doesn’t leak errors or give up court position. Shapo’s backhand played either defence or high-margin neutral tennis, so that his forehand could shine. That he seems to be finding the right balance with this dynamic is potentially huge for his career.
One of the interesting things about Shapovalov is that I think he’s probably the player on tour who I worry about the least when he runs around his backhand to hit a forehand from his backhand corner. He has so much natural pace off that forehand that he’s rarely caught out of position with his opponent able to hit up into the open space (some opponents can capitalise better than others though!). This dynamic repeated over and over today, with Shapovalov patiently engineering opportunities to hit his forehand and profiting by dominating the inside out forehand (from his backhand corner) to Zverev forehand battle.
This Shapovalov patience manifested in the point length totals:
Points under 5 shots: Shapovalov 66, Zverev 65
Points over 5 shots: Shapovalov 38, Zverev 23
Perhaps most interesting though was what happened on Zverev’s serve when Shapovalov was able to neutralise Zverev’s serve and serve +1:
Points over 5 shots on Zverev’s serve: Shapovalov 21, Zverev 14
Shapovalov crafted these offensive opportunities so well, and pushed Zverev so far back in the court so consistently, that he was also able to close down net particularly well, and particularly often: winning 22/27 net points or 87%.
An off-colour Zverev for sure, but a huge win regardless for Shapovalov. Shapo is calmly enabling his strengths more and more and, considering how truly enormous those strengths are, the sky’s the limit if he can keep this trajectory up.
Potentially a much bigger test next for the Canadian against a Nadal in unpredictable form. Unfortunately for Shapo a lot of what worked against Zverev will need to be tweaked for playing a fellow lefty in Rafa (the same slice returns and serve patterns probably won’t work as well as they did vs Zverev), but that match should still be fascinating.
— MW
P.s Hoping to have something out on Barty this week.
Twitter: @mattracquet
See you on Thursday.
Top: Daniel Pockett/Getty, Bottom: Cameron Spencer/Getty
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Great write up. I noticed the preponderance of blocked returns as well and thought it a microcosm of a different approach to point construction on Denis' part. (Safe to believe it's Delgado's influence?) If one can consistently hit that return such that someone like Zverev is falling backwards in their reply, as the German is in your first clip, then after that it's 21-out-of-the-hand as far as the point dynamic goes and Shapovalov's chances of winning a point go up significantly. Do you have any numbers on Shapo's average returns in play? I suspect he posted much better numbers in this match.
(And versus Rafa, will that return suffice even if performed excellently? Not the same opponent by a long shot, Zverev at the top of his game or no.)
Awesome write up as usual.