Too Damn Good

Auger-Aliassime wins his first ATP title in Rotterdam: serve-return analysis, rally strategy, serve+1's, forehand-backhand ratio

Auger-Aliassime d Tsitsipas: 6-4, 6-2

An extremely easy bit of analysis. Auger-Aliassime (FAA) played flawless tennis and enjoyed a significant serve-return edge against Tsitsipas all match long. The Canadian didn’t dip once. A stunning performance worthy of his first ATP Tour title.

There are a few key areas, which cascaded onto one another, which decided this match:

Serve and return

Auger-Aliassime and Tsitsipas posted similar avg serve speeds (especially on 1st serve), but a mixture of superior Auger-Aliassime placement and worse Tsitsipas returning meant that far fewer of Auger-Aliassime’s 1st serves actually came back:

1st Serve Unreturned

• Auger-Aliassime: 47%

• Tsitsipas: 32%

And even when the ball did come back in play, Auger-Aliassime usually had a relatively routine serve+1 (2nd shot after the serve) compared to Tsistipas:

These don’t include aces or unreturned serves. Auger-Aliassime was near-flawless when landing his first serve today, and completely dominant when hitting his forehand on the back of that 1st serve. He had to play just 5 backhands after his serve all match long(winning 4/5), Tsistipas had to play 12 backhands after his serve (winning 4/12). Obviously both want to be playing as many forehands as possible as their serve+1).

Auger-Aliassime enjoyed a repeatable serve strategy for most of the match, aiming into the Tsistipas backhand and profiting:

↑ Auger Aliassime targeted the backhand side on the AD side especially. He split it fairly evenly between wide and T on the Deuce side and his slice serves out wide to the Tsitsipas forehand were also excellent (124mph slice serves onto the line out wide are essentially unplayable).

↑Auger-Aliassime (in red/white) bombing a big 1st serve into the Tsistipas backhand and feasting on the short return with his forehand.

↑ Same again. The problem for Tsitsipas (far end) here is that even if he makes an ok return, it’s very hard for him to escape Auger-Aliassime’s forehand in a serve-advantaged rally like this. When Tsitsipas is chasing a rally like this, it’s nearly impossible for him to actually find Auger-Aliassime’s less devastating backhand, and Auger-Aliassime has time to run around the backhand to hit as many forehands as he likes, as long as he’s in a position to hit big enough (like this). Auger-Aliassime playing with a lot of margin and net clearance, loading spin into Tsistipas’ backhand before choosing the right ball to attack inside-in. Auger-Aliassime’s inside-in forehand has looked straight up incredible to start 2022.

And even when Auger-Aliassime did serve into the Tsitsipas forehand, Auger-Aliassime still usually had the forehands he wanted lined up:

↑ Tsitsipas (near end) moved back to try and make more returns but all this did was make Auger-Aliassime’s 2nd shot easier. Auger-Aliassime plays this point intelligently because he doesn’t try and hit the winner off the 2nd ball, he just loads another heavy forehand deep into Tsistipas’ backhand, which in turn sets up the right ball to attack on the next shot. Subtle bits of mature, patient shot selection like this have been a recurring theme to start the season.

Auger-Aliassime finished the match losing just two(!) 1st serve points.

In stark contrast, Auger-Aliassime’s return performance, off both forehand and backhand, was solid:

↑ Unfortunately for Tsitsipas, Auger-Aliassime’s own backhand wasn’t a returning weakspot to be exploited. Here Auger-Aliassime negates Tsitsipas’ serving advantage with a great backhand 1st serve return, before setting up the right ball to attack with that forehand cross court into the Tsitsipas backhand again.

↑ On 2nd serve things were predictably worse for Tsitsipas. Auger-Aliassime finding Tsitsipas’ backhand with ease on the return. And Tsitsipas’ slice backhand defence leaky, and slice footwork questionable, as usual.

Auger-Aliassime found some solid body and into-the-backhand 2nd serves over the course of the match (winning 11/16 or 69% of 2nd serves pts compared to Tsitsipas’ 8/24 or 33%).

All of this meant that Auger-Aliassime cruised by mostly untroubled on his own serve, and managed to get stuck into Tsitsipas’ service games pretty consistently. Tsistipas didn’t create a single break point all match and the only 30-30’s and Deuce’s he created on Auger-Aliassime’s serve were almost always wiped out with aces/unreturnable serves or serve+1’s:

Fairly brutal reading if you’re Tsitsipas.

Rally

Even when Tsitsipas did manage to work his way into points and avoid some of the serve-return advantage that Auger-Aliassime was enjoying, things often didn’t go well for him:

The primary rally matchup problem for Tsitsipas here is that, at least with Auger-Aliassime’s current backhand form, Stefanos loses the battle of who gets to hit their forehand strength more often than not. Both of these guys have world class forehands but only Auger-Aliassime was allowed his hit his with any consistency today. Here you see Tsitsipas (far end) hitting a good backhand 2nd serve return and getting to a neutral baseline rally (not something that happened often today). But all it takes is one good Auger-Aliassime backhand cross court and all of a sudden Tsitsipas is again trapped in his backhand corner defending, and Auger-Aliassime is camped in his own backhand corner but playing forehands. From this position Tsitsipas’ only option to escape backhand jail is either a sharp angled backhand to find Auger-Aliassime’s backhand (tough) or a low margin backhand drive down the line into Auger-Aliassime’s open forehand corner (tougher). Tsitsipas still doesn’t defend well enough out of his backhand corner on a hard court to reverse dynamics like this too often against as powerful a hitter as Auger-Aliassime.

A superior serve-return and rally dynamic meant that Auger-Aliassime’s forehand strength got to shine. Tsitsipas’ didn’t.

Forehand & backhand groundstrokes:

• Tsitsipas: 50 forehands, 60 backhands (45% forehands)

• Auger-Aliassime: 78 forehands, 49 backhands (61% forehands)

Too good

As I’ve written about a bunch this season already, Auger-Aliassime’s serve and forehand will always take the glory, but his backhand has to hold up long enough to enable part of that glory. It did once again today, his forehand from his backhand corner was exceptional all match long, as was his 1st serve power and accuracy. There are few greater weapons in men’s tennis right now than that combo.

As for Tsitsipas, I think he can play better. His serve still looks a little worse than usual after his off-season elbow surgery, and the rest of his game is probably suffering subtly as a result. As I wrote in Tsitsipas’ improvement analysis at the end of 2021, unless his return and defensive backhand performances can improve, his serve is going to be required to do a hell of a lot of heavy lifting to cover up those cracks. His serve wasn’t quite there today and he got smoked. The cracks were visible. I’d caution against reading too much into this result from Tsitsipas’ perspective however, as there are some tiny signs of improvement in those areas so far this year, even if they’re probably too nascent to show up in a match at this level yet.

But on days like this where Auger-Aliassime was playing as well as he was, there’s very little anyone on the tour can do. The Canadian was not only winning all the points he should be winning (big serves, forehand serve +1 and forehand rallies), which happened to make up the majority of points today, but he even won most of the points he shouldn’t be winning:

Tsitsipas (near end), clearly a bit fed up at this point, does everything right here. Crushes a huge and rare backhand return onto Auger-Aliassime’s baseline, attacks the Auger-Aliassime backhand off the short ball, and yet still gets burned by an incredible pass.

At some point you just have to shrug your shoulders and say ‘too damn good’.

—MW

Twitter: @mattracquet

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Top: Rico Brouwer/Soccrates/Getty, Bottom: SANDER KONING/ANP/AFP via Getty

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