Tactical Observations from the AO 2024 Men's Final

[FedForGOAT]

Hi All,
What a rollercoaster of a match!

To all the Sinner fans (including myself ) big congrats! Our man played his heart out and is a deserving winner.
To Medvedev fans my sincere condolences. Med played amazing for two sets. I'm a fan of him as a person, and wish him continued success. To quote a certain former champion "I know how you feel" .

I was fascinated by the tactics and strategy in this match (as well as their execution). My thoughts are not fully organized at the moment, but while the match is fresh in my mind, here's what I noticed:

- Med came out firing. For the first two sets, he seemed to have no trouble with Sinner's first delivery.

- I'd like to know, did Sinner have any aces in these sets even? A: just looked it up, he had two aces in the first set and 1 in the second​

- Med put 23/28 returns in play for set 1, and 27/34 in set 2. So overall an 19.35% unreturned rate for Sinner. It felt somehow lower​

- Med was crushing 2nd serve returns. Sinner was immediately on the defensive
- Sinner seemed shellshocked at first. I imagine part of it is that he wasn't expecting Med to be so aggressive.

- It was a bit reminiscent of the Thiem-Zverev US Open final for me. Zverev came out firing and blew Dominic off the court. Meanwhile, it seemed like Thiem was so tight that he couldn't get much power on his shots. The set winners was the same in this match, but I don't think it was for the same reasons.​

- Even before Sinner got broken, I was worried something was wrong with his mentality. Now, as a fan I often worry, so it may be meaningless. But throughout the tournament, especially on serve, he had this look in his eyes, that seemed to me like utter focus. The look reminded me of the look Fed sometimes had in his eyes in 2004-2006. It was this intense, eyes wide open look that Roger especially had on the return. This look of ... zen*. I know it sounds cliche and mystical and I have no idea what actually is in players' heads. But that look, which I've seen from Jannik as well this tournament, makes it seem like all the surroundings just melt away, and the player is only focused on hitting the ball perfectly.​

- This match, when Jannik came out, his expression just seemed... different. Idk if it's in my head, but I already thought he was tense.​

* Come to think of it, I've also seen that look in. other players' eye sometimes. Djokovic, in crucial return games (darn USO semi...) (here's a good picture link). Soderling in that final tiebreaker against Nadal at RG. I'm sure there are others.​

- However if we go back to the first two games of the match, Sinner held comfortably in his service game, and I believe got to deuce in Med's. I don't know what would've happened if Sinner broke in that second game. What happened instead was fine for me

Some observations which many have made:

- Sinner was struggling with Med's flat skidding shots. There were times when he wasn't super far from a winner hit by Med, but the ball double bounced so quickly he didn't get to them
- Sinner was standing very close to the baseline in rallies, and Med's incredible depth hurt him. Whenever Med hit balls within 1-2 ft of the baseline, Sinner was trying to hit them on the rise, and since they were so low anyways shanked quite a few
- Med was dominating the crosscourt rallies. I often think of him as someone who struggles to create angles with his flat strokes, but today he repeatedly threaded the needle. He kept on beating Sinner by going more sharply cc, or changing direction and going DTL
- Med's retrieval was also absurd. I lost track of the number of defensive slice moonshots he hit that seemed to land smack on the baseline. Brings me flashbacks of Nadal vs Fed.
- Sinner struggled to go DTL against Med's shots in the first 2 sets. He seemed to try to hit close to the lines, as he felt he wasn't breaking Med's defenses otherwise.

- But I don't think that's Sinner's game. He generally hits to "big targets", coming up with shots close to the lines mostly for passing shots. He isn't Roger, whose game was predicated on placements​

- Speaking of RF (and RN), I think Sinner is relatively more limited in the shape of his FH. Rafa especially, but also Roger, were masters at picking up low balls with their forehands. I think they could've broken down Daniil's defenses more efficiently. When DM hit shorter but still lower balls, Sinner couldn't really put the ball out of his reach, because he doesn't create the same shape they do. I know he can create lots of topspin, so I wonder if that's something he should work on at some point. Though I don't think he should mess with his game too much right now.
-Med volleyed to great effect early on. Sinner's passes weren't great, but he hit some dipping ones right at him, and med hit great, spinny drop volleys. Soft hands for sure

- On a side note, I think drop volleys are underused in today's game. Whenever you see players hit them well (Med, Alcaraz, Nadal, Tsonga at the AO 08), they seem to work every time.​

​

- Sinner seems pretty good at hitting drive volleys from pretty deep in the court. He missed a couple but he hit most of the for clean winners and with margin. I've seen many pros struggle with that. (Tsonga seemed pretty good at this, though)
- He also seemed generally aware of which way Med was going and hit behind him. Again, not easy while keeping your eye on the ball.
- Sinner has what looks to me like a "pendulum swing" of sorts on these drive FHs. When seeing them in slo-mo, it was really noticeable the torso rotation he had. It felt like he was just turning his chest and his right wrm would consequently swing forward, as his left came back. Quite reminiscent of Djokovic's FH at times. Some players like Kyrgios, Medvedev seem to have more of an "arm swing", where the FH seems to mostly come from the arm. To my eyes Federer's forehand seem to come from hips - he had a really pronounced hip turn, especially when going inside-in. I'd say Rafa's FH used his whole body, but his also felt loaded from the legs - he seemed to spring up as he hit FHs

I was thinking of this because Roger and Rafa had/have such great inside-out/inside-in FHs, and I feel like Djokovic and Sinner have really strong CC ones. I'm wondering if "hippy/leggy" FHs are more conducive to FH from the BH side, and "chesty" FHs are suited for CC - it seems intuitively mechanically plausible.

Part II to come

 

[FedForGOAT]

Part II:
- Speaking of CC FHs... Given Med's shape of shot, he seemed to thrive at going CC after an angle has already been created. That's because he likes to hit the ball over the low part of the net. So if he's hitting from the doubles alley, he can send the ball sharply diagonally. If he's hitting from the middle of the court, he really can't generate as much angle. True on both sides, I think

- Given this, I thought what Jannik should do is not give Med and angles to work with. Since he was having trouble striking first, he should rely on Med missing first. Now, Med is incredibly consistent from the back, but a couple of factors in favor of this strategy:

- Jannik has more margin/net clearance on his shots to to more TS. If he "hits aggressively to (very) conservative locations" Med might well miss first​

- Med spent more time on court, and has been exhausted in long matches before (AO final vs Rafa comes to mind). The moment Med broke early on, I thought Jannik should make it a dog fight​

- Sometimes, tall players thrive on playing against TS. For example tall players like Delpo, Soderling, even Rosol, have sometimes been able to tee off on Rafa's FHs which go into their zones. However, as discussed before, Jannik's forehand doesn't actually go very high usually. And topspin actually makes balls bounce lower from the same initial height (all other things being equal). As someone with flattish strokes and no great RHS myself, I know I've struggled against players with lots of topspin, also in table tennis. Simply put, if you hit flat against topspin, the ball tend to "sky" on you - topspin is backspin when the ball is going the other way, and it's quite hard to counteract all of it.​

- Another way of looking at it - Med struggles with clay court tennis (he's improved, but still). Turn this into a clay court match​

​

To his credit, I think Jannik adjusted in many of these ways, especially in the 4th set
- He started hitting his groundstrokes very centrally and less aggressively and won many of these rallys. I actually felt he should've done it even more. If it ain't broke don't fix it

- to be fair to him, it's hard to adjust such things in the middle of a match. He has won hundreds of matches by pushing people around with his fh... to suddenly start push it in, that's tough​

- It's also tough to hit less aggressively with out deceleration, which is something Zverev for example does when tight. I thought Sinner did this wonderfully.​

- He adjusted his return position. He started standing further back on both 1st and second serves. Daniil started rolling in his seconds, and these second serve points essentially started from neutral.
- He put great margin on his dtl shots. While he started out hitting centrally initially, I thought he did a fantastic job of Moving Med around in a controlled manner. He arced his DTL shots and with distance from the line, moving Med back and forth. In the beginning of the match, Med was running Sinner side to side. In the second half, it was the opposite.
- once he calmed down, his accuracy notably improved on his strokes
- When Med came in to the net, Sinner started getting much more success trying to pass DTL. A couple of times in the 5th, Med didn't even make it to the net when the ball passed him.

For his part, Med facilitated this somewhat by:
- Declined somewhat on the return - but he was returning so unbelievably well to start, I'd chalk that up to regression to the mean
- Dropped mph on serves. Given how long he's been on court, its logical that he would lose his legs a bit.
-seemed to miss more firsts - he was still getting decent % unreturned first serves, but having to hit more seconds
- started to hit less aggressively. Again, I think a major part of this was due to Sinner giving him less openings, but he was noticeably less aggressive on some of his returns. Again, he was probably just exhausted.

Any other thoughts or feedback are welcome.
Sorry for the incredibly long and perhaps incoherent rant. this match has me majorly amped.
Forza Jannik!

 

[Rovesciarete]

Lots of great stuff, congrats! Have to digest them.

 

[Frankc]

Maybe 15 years ago or so, I talked with an experience WTA coach about the state of the game.
Briefly stated, he said "Forget about strategy, just find the best athlete. That is where the game is and will be."

I find a post about the tactical side of the final interesting as there, actually, are very few tactics in play anymore, just as there is very little shot variety anymore.
Yes, true, a few strategic ideas are in place- but essentially the last athlete standing wins...

Nice job with detail in your post of observations... well done...

 

[Rovesciarete]

Truly an excellent post, will have to work it in later into some others. Acute observation of the Sinner forehand and so many other elements.

 

[bolo]

Really interesting summary.

I also noticed that Medvedev's cc fh was really improved in this match. Usually his CC fh is simply a neutral rally shot to get the point going and he doesn't do much with it. Really good players can typically go there and take a breather in the rally. But not on Sunday.

 

[aussie]

Maybe 15 years ago or so, I talked with an experience WTA coach about the state of the game.
Briefly stated, he said "Forget about strategy, just find the best athlete. That is where the game is and will be."

I find a post about the tactical side of the final interesting as there, actually, are very few tactics in play anymore, just as there is very little shot variety anymore.
Yes, true, a few strategic ideas are in place- but essentially the last athlete standing wins...

Nice job with detail in your post of observations... well done...

Interesting comment from a WTA coach. And then along came Ash Barty, not at all what anyone would call an elite athlete, but used strategy and variety to completely dominate the women's tour.

The only player she had no real answer to was Sabalenka (and Osaka somewhat) when she was on because as Barty said, she takes the racquet out of your hands.

 

[FedForGOAT]

Maybe 15 years ago or so, I talked with an experience WTA coach about the state of the game.
Briefly stated, he said "Forget about strategy, just find the best athlete. That is where the game is and will be."

I find a post about the tactical side of the final interesting as there, actually, are very few tactics in play anymore, just as there is very little shot variety anymore.
Yes, true, a few strategic ideas are in place- but essentially the last athlete standing wins...

Nice job with detail in your post of observations... well done...

Interesting observations. I would love to have a thread discussing tennis tactics.
I’m not an expert by any means - I’m just writing what I see.

but I can’t help but feeling, and I felt this well for a while, that many pro tennis players play tactically quite suboptimally.

To give a very specific example: the drop shot serve. There are many instances, where I see the returner way behind the baseline as is common these days. And I feel that any decent drop shot serve would be unreturnable, even for prime Rafael Nadal.
Look at this example:

. Unfortunately, this video is super low quality, but the higher quality video has apparently been removed from YouTube. Basically, as he was holding his racket and ball forward to prepare his service motion, Karlovic just sort of tapped the ball over the net. Haas didn’t move a muscle. Granted this is Karlovic, so Haas would be standing far back, and this was 40-0. But the degree of difficulty of the shot did not seem very high. You see guys like Alcaraz beautiful droppers off of moving balls. it’s hard to convince me that if they practiced most pros could not hit very consistent droppers on a serve where they’re holding the ball in place.
And strategically, this could be a devastating surprise weapon. For example, when Jannik was serving for the match against Medvedev. On matchpoint, Medvedev was standing so far back, I was thinking, if Sinner hits he drop serve, there is no way Medvedev was getting to it. And with the pressure of matchpoint, wouldn’t it be great to have such a surprise weapon in your bag?

I’m sure there are many other examples. Dimitrov has recently mentioned that he feels like his Slice is a real weapon. That when he slices many players just don’t know what to do I’m sure there are many players who would benefit from developing a stronger Slice

Now, to some degree I get it. When players are developing as juniors, it is very important for them to develop strong groundstrokes as a junior you can work on developing good hands and drop shots and slices, but if you don’t develop power off the ground you’re going to be severely limited. If you look at players like Mannarino, Hsieh, Santoro, etc., they cause people, headaches, but they very rarely get to the very top. so many players are spending their formative years becoming great drivers of the ball.
But I don’t think it needs to be an either or proposition. I don’t think you need to be John McEnroe in order to hit a surprise drop serve. And to his credit, I think Sinner, as an example, gets it. He has hired Vangozzi, a former doubles player as his coach. And he’s been going to the net and hitting some drop shots. He still looks artificial doing it to my eyes, but I think he will improve.

Again, sorry for the rant, but I find this topic fascinating.

 

[FedForGOAT]

Interesting comment from a WTA coach. And then along came Ash Barty, not at all what anyone would call an elite athlete, but used strategy and variety to completely dominate the women's tour.

The only player she had no real answer to was Sabalenka (and Osaka somewhat) when she was on because as Barty said, she takes the racquet out of your hands.

Astute, observation! I don’t follow the WTA as much, but I think this might also be a difference between the two tours.

I think that maybe on the ATP side, players on the whole are hitting the ball so hard and with so much spin, that it takes the best athletes’ best touch just to consistently return the ball, so there isn’t much margin to finesse it.

Additionally, I think the men are significantly better movers. So moving the ball around and hitting awkward shots is only gonna do so much if you don’t have finishing power.
Notice that, while the men in the women hit with similar pace, on average, when the men are attempting a put away, they can inject significantly more pace.

Just spitballing here.

 

[Vincent-C]

Interesting observations. I would love to have a thread discussing tennis tactics.
I’m not an expert by any means - I’m just writing what I see.

but I can’t help but feeling, and I felt this well for a while, that many pro tennis players play tactically quite suboptimally.

To give a very specific example: the drop shot serve. There are many instances, where I see the returner way behind the baseline as is common these days. And I feel that any decent drop shot serve would be unreturnable, even for prime Rafael Nadal.
Look at this example:

. Unfortunately, this video is super low quality, but the higher quality video has apparently been removed from YouTube. Basically, as he was holding his racket and ball forward to prepare his service motion, Karlovic just sort of tapped the ball over the net. Haas didn’t move a muscle. Granted this is Karlovic, so Haas would be standing far back, and this was 40-0. But the degree of difficulty of the shot did not seem very high. You see guys like Alcaraz beautiful droppers off of moving balls. it’s hard to convince me that if they practiced most pros could not hit very consistent droppers on a serve where they’re holding the ball in place.
And strategically, this could be a devastating surprise weapon. For example, when Jannik was serving for the match against Medvedev. On matchpoint, Medvedev was standing so far back, I was thinking, if Sinner hits he drop serve, there is no way Medvedev was getting to it. And with the pressure of matchpoint, wouldn’t it be great to have such a surprise weapon in your bag?

I’m sure there are many other examples. Dimitrov has recently mentioned that he feels like his Slice is a real weapon. That when he slices many players just don’t know what to do I’m sure there are many players who would benefit from developing a stronger Slice

Now, to some degree I get it. When players are developing as juniors, it is very important for them to develop strong groundstrokes as a junior you can work on developing good hands and drop shots and slices, but if you don’t develop power off the ground you’re going to be severely limited. If you look at players like Mannarino, Hsieh, Santoro, etc., they cause people, headaches, but they very rarely get to the very top. so many players are spending their formative years becoming great drivers of the ball.
But I don’t think it needs to be an either or proposition. I don’t think you need to be John McEnroe in order to hit a surprise drop serve. And to his credit, I think Sinner, as an example, gets it. He has hired Vangozzi, a former doubles player as his coach. And he’s been going to the net and hitting some drop shots. He still looks artificial doing it to my eyes, but I think he will improve.

Again, sorry for the rant, but I find this topic fascinating.

Dimitrov's point about the slice is well-taken: it can be a superb probing or reset shot, and is way underused.
Jaime Yzaga (5'7") was great at that- ask Sampras.

 

[Rovesciarete]

Now, to some degree I get it. When players are developing as juniors, it is very important for them to develop strong groundstrokes as a junior you can work on developing good hands and drop shots and slices, but if you don’t develop power off the ground you’re going to be severely limited. If you look at players like Mannarino, Hsieh, Santoro, etc., they cause people, headaches, but they very rarely get to the very top. so many players are spending their formative years becoming great drivers of the ball.
But I don’t think it needs to be an either or proposition. I don’t think you need to be John McEnroe in order to hit a surprise drop serve. And to his credit, I think Sinner, as an example, gets it. He has hired Vangozzi, a former doubles player as his coach. And he’s been going to the net and hitting some drop shots. He still looks artificial doing it to my eyes, but I think he will improve.

Again, sorry for the rant, but I find this topic fascinating.

Often development gets in hindsight overestimated. Jannik has been for at least two years been one of the most efficient at the net and with drop shots. In his press conference in Rome he even stated that he might have been even stronger if he stayed with Piatti, but nobody can tell what might have been. It is in my opinion a matter of his intellectual honesty.

Overall Alcaraz and Sinner find indeed a lot of success with their drop shots because they have also big weapons. When Alcaraz winds up his forehand after a shortish cc backhand he can go pretty much anywhere. DTL or IO drive or drop.

Medvedev's flat shots and deep positions compliment each other well and especially in the cc rallies where he goes over the lower part of net into the weaker wing of most players. He has been frustrating also aggressive baseliners with a good backhand because they want to create something and mostly get only deep, low balls with little angle with good or weak pace.

 

[mauricem]

Briefly stated, he said "Forget about strategy, just find the best athlete. That is where the game is and will be."

I recall a discussion with one of Australia's Davis Cup coaches probably 20 years ago when I was working in the media talking about talent development and the competition from other sports for elite junior athletes. He basically said they just want fast kids as they can teach anybody to hit a ball but if they can't get to the ball it makes no difference what their shots are like. Sounds like an over simplification but that was almost verbatim.

 

[FedForGOAT]

Often development gets in hindsight overestimated. Jannik has been for at least two years been one of the most efficient at the net and with drop shots. In his press conference in Rome he even stated that he might have been even stronger if he stayed with Piatti, but nobody can tell what might have been. It is in my opinion a matter of his intellectual honesty.

Overall Alcaraz and Sinner find indeed a lot of success with their drop shots because they have also big weapons. When Alcaraz winds up his forehand after a shortish cc backhand he can go pretty much anywhere. DTL or IO drive or drop.

Medvedev's flat shots and deep positions compliment each other well and especially in the cc rallies where he goes over the lower part of net into the weaker wing of most players. He has been frustrating also aggressive baseliners with a good backhand because they want to create something and mostly get only deep, low balls with little angle with good or weak pace.

Interesting, can you point me to a source on these stats? To my eyes, 2 years ago Sinner looked quite shaky at the net, and I think I almost never saw him drop shot.
And fair enough about hindsight. That's definitely possible

Are you referring to these stats: http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/drop-shot-stats.749088/post-17314373?
Sinner was above average in drop shots, but there are many players with similar success. Also these percentages only refer to points won outright on the drop shots (winners and forced errors)
Sinner does have one of the top net success percentages, but I find net success percentage to be one of the most misleading statistics in tennis, having much more to do with when one goes to the net, rather than how good they are there. Also, the many surfaces of tennis muddle things up a lot. As you say I'm sure Sinner's big groundies give him a lot of opportunities for easy point endings.

Finally, I have tremendous respect for what TennisAbstract does, but I've often had doubts about dome of the numbers they have. Tl;dr for assessing things like how good a player's drop shot is, I still have more faith in the eye test than in stats. I know how vulnerable the eye test can be, but I think it's useful in this context

 

[FedForGOAT]

I recall a discussion with one of Australia's Davis Cup coaches probably 20 years ago when I was working in the media talking about talent development and the competition from other sports for elite junior athletes. He basically said they just want fast kids as they can teach anybody to hit a ball but if they can't get to the ball it makes no difference what their shots are like. Sounds like an over simplification but that was almost verbatim.

Interesting. Well, you know what they say in basketball: "you can't teach height". You can't teach speed either, and for the most part, all the all-time greats were fantastic movers. In fact, I think the greatest non-elite movers (at least of the open era) were Becker and Agassi, who were tremendous hitters of the ball, and were limited from achieving more due to their movement (I believe Becker has been referred to as 'the greatest 3-shot player').

But another skill which I believe is not really teachable is racket head speed, or having a "live arm" a la Kyrgios. As someone who doesn't have great racket head speed, I'm acutely aware of the fact that some people can simply move their hands faster, and no amount of technique can completely overcome that.
If it were a teachable skill, we'd see guys like Hewitt and De Minaur improving their weight of shots.

So basically, I kinda disagree. I think the best players are blessed with both speed and power (Sampras comes to mind, though the big 3 are/were obviously not lacking in these either).
Just my 2 cents.

 

[mauricem]

So basically, I kinda disagree. I think the best players are blessed with both speed and power

Of course there's more to it than speed but if they're naturally slow (like me) then that means there's no chance of ever reaching the higher grades. So they first up look for the good sprinters then from that pool drill down to those who can throw a ball (live arm) and then on to reaction time etc.