Simply put... Del Potro blew Fed away

He hit more winners then Federer. I can't remember a non-clay slam match that Fed hit less winners then his opponents(Rafa prob hit more winners in 2008 FO). Can anyone remember the last time it happened?
 

BreakPoint

Bionic Poster
Federer played one of the worst matches of his career. Terrible serving. Shanking every other ball. Totally the wrong strategy of hitting exclusively to Delpo's forehand. Weak returns of serve. Was not aggressive on 2nd serve returns. Stopped coming into the net. Unforced errors like crazy. Very bad decision making throughout the entire match. He must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or something as he just seemed all out of sorts out there.

Maybe his babies kept him up all night? Whatever it was, he definitely was not himself out there today.

Delpo didn't even play all that well and he still beat Federer. Just a pathetic performance altogether by Federer.
 

big bang

Hall of Fame
had Del Potro been more experienced he would have won in 4, he broke Fed in every set except the first and still he was not even close to the form he showed against Nadal:)
 

Rabbit

G.O.A.T.
Had DelPo continued his play of the first two sets, he'd have lost. He picked up the pace considerably and started hitting monster groundstrokes.

I agree, Fed played poorly, especially his service. But there are no excuses, DelPo just turned it on and hung in there.
 

flyer

Hall of Fame
i dont think he blew him away, it was 5 close sets, he out hit him in the end but it wasnt to the tune of 62 62 62, thats blowing people away...
 

jlitt93

New User
Federer played one of the worst matches of his career. Terrible serving. Shanking every other ball. Totally the wrong strategy of hitting exclusively to Delpo's forehand. Weak returns of serve. Was not aggressive on 2nd serve returns. Stopped coming into the net. Unforced errors like crazy. Very bad decision making throughout the entire match. He must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or something as he just seemed all out of sorts out there.

Maybe his babies kept him up all night? Whatever it was, he definitely was not himself out there today.

Delpo didn't even play all that well and he still beat Federer. Just a pathetic performance altogether by Federer.

I have to disagree. I mean, Federer started the match rolling, and he was up 5-3 in the 2nd set I am sure. When Del Potro turned his game on, Federer couldn't match up to him and that is when the errors and double faults began to pile up on him. IMO, Federer had the opportunity to breeze through the final but he ended up choking. And in my eyes it wasn't Federer choking as much as it was Del Potro coming up big in the huge situations. Del Potro outplayed Federer and there really isn't an excuse for it. Basically, Federer was worn out by the end of the match and it was obvious.
 

tricky

Hall of Fame
And in my eyes it wasn't Federer choking as much as it was Del Potro coming up big in the huge situations. Del Potro outplayed Federer and there really isn't an excuse for it. Basically, Federer was worn out by the end of the match and it was obvious.

That's how I interpreted it too. Federer was shanking a lot of shots in the 4th and 5th sets, but I thought it was due to Federer not being able to handle the raw pace coming back at him. He was flat-out hitting the ball late a lot of times. This was maybe the first time I've really seen Federer not able to handle the power of his opponent, including against Safin.

The other thing is, DelPo was guessing correctly on a lot of Federer's patterns. Federer fell in love with that inside-out DTL FH shot, but he wasn't getting enough depth on it. Federer just kept on going at it, and DelPo just unloaded. DelPo went through this weird period where he was taking too much off his serves, but that also enabled him to get into extended rallies with Federer. Federer likes to play angles and force players to do something against the short ball, but DelPo was taking him apart doing that.
 

tata

Hall of Fame
Yea Federer could have taken the 2nd set. He had triple break point but potro just came up with 3 big first serves when he needed it. Although fed did serve poorly i dont think it was a big factor in why he lost. I think potro thought he was going to lose anyway after fed took the 3rd set and just swung with everything he had like he had nothing to lose.....which he doesnt anyway.Fed lost a bit of concentration and made more errors mid way onwards but once again more so to do with potro getting his act together.
 

Tony48

Legend
Federer played one of the worst matches of his career. Terrible serving. Shanking every other ball. Totally the wrong strategy of hitting exclusively to Delpo's forehand. Weak returns of serve. Was not aggressive on 2nd serve returns. Stopped coming into the net. Unforced errors like crazy. Very bad decision making throughout the entire match. He must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or something as he just seemed all out of sorts out there.

Maybe his babies kept him up all night? Whatever it was, he definitely was not himself out there today.

Delpo didn't even play all that well and he still beat Federer. Just a pathetic performance altogether by Federer.

I hope no one on this board takes anything you say seriously.
 
Federer played one of the worst matches of his career. Terrible serving. Shanking every other ball. Totally the wrong strategy of hitting exclusively to Delpo's forehand. Weak returns of serve. Was not aggressive on 2nd serve returns. Stopped coming into the net. Unforced errors like crazy. Very bad decision making throughout the entire match. He must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or something as he just seemed all out of sorts out there.

Maybe his babies kept him up all night? Whatever it was, he definitely was not himself out there today.

Delpo didn't even play all that well and he still beat Federer. Just a pathetic performance altogether by Federer.

Federer played well, theres nothing he could have done he simply got hit off the court. (Yeah thats right, im using your wording after Nadal lost to Soderling at the French Open)
 
Congrats to Del Potro. Before the match I thought Fed would win this one in four or maybe five sets, but after Del Potro broke back in the second Delpo's game just got better and better.

I think Fed could have put more variation in his game since Delpo started to read his shots better as the match went on. In the first set he mixed up his backhand nicely with slice but later he only hit with topspin. Also, his serving was below par and some approaches were just not punishing enough.

But anyway, I am happy for Del Potro, what a player he is. It seemed that he still couldn't believe it while he was holding the trophy.
 

BreakPoint

Bionic Poster
I have to disagree. I mean, Federer started the match rolling, and he was up 5-3 in the 2nd set I am sure. When Del Potro turned his game on, Federer couldn't match up to him and that is when the errors and double faults began to pile up on him. IMO, Federer had the opportunity to breeze through the final but he ended up choking. And in my eyes it wasn't Federer choking as much as it was Del Potro coming up big in the huge situations. Del Potro outplayed Federer and there really isn't an excuse for it. Basically, Federer was worn out by the end of the match and it was obvious.
That was because Delpo couldn't get a first serve in nor hit a ball in the court to save his life in the 1st set. Both were playing pitiful tennis. Federer only won the first set and was up a break in the second because Delpo was playing even worse than Federer was. It was like neither of them wanted to win. Once Federer let Delpo back into the match by allowing himself to be broken after leading 5-3, 30-0 in the 2nd set, Delpo started believing he could win the match and grew more confident by the minute. That was basically the end for Federer. Delpo raised his game from then on but Federer continued to play poorly throughout the entire match. Hitting everything to Delpo's forehand and trying weird shots instead of hitting winners when the opportunity was right in front of him was very strange for Federer. Did he think he was playing left-handed Nadal out there? It was like Federer left his brain in the hotel room when he came to the court today.
 

BreakPoint

Bionic Poster
Federer played well, theres nothing he could have done he simply got hit off the court. (Yeah thats right, im using your wording after Nadal lost to Soderling at the French Open)
Those two matches have absolutely nothing in common. Soderling played the match of his life to beat Nadal at the French. Whereas, Del Potro played one of the worst matches of his life and still beat Federer at the US Open. Federer was pitiful and pathetic. It was as if he forgot how to play tennis. Why would you hit every ball to your opponent's biggest weapon on purpose? And getting hit off of the court has nothing to do pitiful serving.

Del Potro hit Nadal off of the court in the semis as everyone saw. Federer lost because he couldn't get a serve in and couldn't hit a groundstroke without framing it. Delpo beat Nadal by hitting winners past Nadal. Delpo beat Federer because Federer couldn't hit a ball into the court.
 

Tony48

Legend
Del Potro put the fear of God in Federer. The last time I saw him look so scared in a major was....against Nadal. All that shanking was nerves. It's so rare that Fed is intimidated by his opponent.
 

Automatix

Legend
Federer played one of the worst matches of his career. Terrible serving. Shanking every other ball. Totally the wrong strategy of hitting exclusively to Delpo's forehand. Weak returns of serve. Was not aggressive on 2nd serve returns. Stopped coming into the net. Unforced errors like crazy. Very bad decision making throughout the entire match. He must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or something as he just seemed all out of sorts out there.

...

Delpo didn't even play all that well and he still beat Federer. Just a pathetic performance altogether by Federer.
+1...........................
 

Polvorin

Professional
That's how I interpreted it too. Federer was shanking a lot of shots in the 4th and 5th sets, but I thought it was due to Federer not being able to handle the raw pace coming back at him. He was flat-out hitting the ball late a lot of times. This was maybe the first time I've really seen Federer not able to handle the power of his opponent, including against Safin.

It was bizarre considering that Fed usually handles pace so well...but a lot of those wild forehands were on sitters, not powerful shots.
 

sh@de

Hall of Fame
I think what many people fail to realize is that Federer actually played a poor match. I'm not taking anything away from Delpo's win, because if he hadn't had the ability to hang in there, he wouldn't have pulled through, but ultimately, I think that this match was Fed's to lose. He was serving for a two sets to love lead and got broken... he wasted masses of bp opportunities... he was two sets up to one at one point... there were just so many places where he could have dealt the final blow and made DP deflate, but it never happened.
 

Tony48

Legend
I think what many people fail to realize is that Federer actually played a poor match. I'm not taking anything away from Delpo's win, because if he hadn't had the ability to hang in there, he wouldn't have pulled through, but ultimately, I think that this match was Fed's to lose. He was serving for a two sets to love lead and got broken... he wasted masses of bp opportunities... he was two sets up to one at one point... there were just so many places where he could have dealt the final blow and made DP deflate, but it never happened.

Del Potro double faulted twice to give Federer the 3rd set and to go up 2 sets to 1.
 
I dont think fed wasted too many bp, at least not on those occasions where it really mattered (like the first set). Most bp that did matter were played well by Del Potro. Of course, he should have won the second set, then he would have steam-rolled and I could hit my bed.
 

larry10s

Hall of Fame
feds 50%1st serve number and 11 double faults are not the stats of a winner of a match. inspite of a poor serving daqy the match still went 5 sets. not a blow away. my 2 cents is that roger did not have the fire for this one. he showed little emotion upon losing and in the press conference said he was tired and hadh had a good tournament and year. i think hell play with the babies win the final master series champion ship and roar into the australian open envigorated. my $. 02
 

Cindysphinx

G.O.A.T.
My take on it is that DelPo won because he was smarter than Fed. A lot smarter.

When DelPo DF'd in the third set, he observed that Fed wasn't hurting him with his return of serve. So DP took off some pace and raised his first serve percentage. Fed did not adjust at all. He never tried to punish these cupcake serves.

When DelPo started blasting his FH, Fed didn't adjust at all.

Fed didn't play nearly enough drop shots, even though the few he did play worked reasonably well.

When DP hit huge pace with his FH, Fed did not hit a defensive shot to allow himself to get back into position. Instead, he hit back as hard. So he couldn't cover the court for the next shot.

And when Fed wasn't serving well, DP took big chances on the return, thereby intimidating Fed into not taking something off of his serve to get it in.

Bottom line: DP was the better player because he was the smarter player.
 

sureshs

Bionic Poster
Bottomline is that Del can hit shots which Fed cannot hit, probably no one can. 110 mph crosscourt FHs, jumping cross court BHs hit hard - are examples of shots which require height and strength.
 
D

Deleted member 3771

Guest
Federer played one of the worst matches of his career. Terrible serving. Shanking every other ball. Totally the wrong strategy of hitting exclusively to Delpo's forehand. Weak returns of serve. Was not aggressive on 2nd serve returns. Stopped coming into the net. Unforced errors like crazy. Very bad decision making throughout the entire match. He must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or something as he just seemed all out of sorts out there.

Maybe his babies kept him up all night? Whatever it was, he definitely was not himself out there today.

Delpo didn't even play all that well and he still beat Federer. Just a pathetic performance altogether by Federer.

If Federer knew Delpo was going to play so well he would have packed his bigger 95" rackets.
 
Why can't anyone just give Del Potro credit? It doesn't take anything away from Federer's greatness or what he's accomplished. Del Potro has played amazingly well since Wimbledon, and he's going to be one of the next stars on the tour. He took the US Open by beating two of the greatest players that have played the game (yes, I do think Rafa is that good).
 

jrepac

Hall of Fame
not really

given the start of the match, Del Potro looked like he was going to be blown out...he could've folded...he didn't (much like Roddick didn't in the W final)

Federer's serving definitely went off...his serve saved him at W....but killed him here

great turn around from Del Potro...
 

tlm

G.O.A.T.
Delpo made a great comeback, but in the 5th he just played solid+let fed ckoke the match away.
 
He hit more winners then Federer. I can't remember a non-clay slam match that Fed hit less winners then his opponents(Rafa prob hit more winners in 2008 FO). Can anyone remember the last time it happened?

IMO Fed blew himself away in this match. Fed had a set up and served for the 2nd and blew that.
He then was reluctant to used the stuff that works on DP.
Rushing the net , short angles and slices. He went away from that. Stupid Fed.
 

Stinkdyr

Professional
Fed must be regretting those charity points and games he threw in the 2nd set. And his serve % was low throughout. He should have used a strategy of making the big guy cover more court side to side to exhaust him. And finally, Fed ran out of gas in the 5th cuz he is entering the twilight of his career.
 

P_Agony

Banned
Federer played well, theres nothing he could have done he simply got hit off the court. (Yeah thats right, im using your wording after Nadal lost to Soderling at the French Open)

You have seriously been gj'd!

How can you consider bad serving (low %), huge numbers of unforced errors, low % of BP converted a good play? Nadal played better against Soderling than Fed did against Del Potro IMO.
 

P_Agony

Banned
IMO Fed blew himself away in this match. Fed had a set up and served for the 2nd and blew that.
He then was reluctant to used the stuff that works on DP.
Rushing the net , short angles and slices. He went away from that. Stupid Fed.

Well said, Fed was brainless after the break in the 2nd set. He also always tried to serve his 1st serve to Delpo's BH in the ad side, and ALWAYS dumped it in the net. He saw this serve isn't really going well yet he kept trying, he was really stubborn instead of maybe taking some of the pace away or changing direction. I kept thinking to myself "Fed stop hitting your serve there, you tried it for 50 times already, it doesn't work for you today!".

Fed, in a very strange way, refused to use his low slice after a while to DP's BH, and instead tried to outpower DP from the baseline with the shots to his FH. Delpo was the one dictating play, and Fed was on defense for most of the time. Fed really played without any tactics in mind.

Also, Fed is usually a slam TB monster. He almost never losses a TB in slams, let alone 2 TBs. Gave the minibreaks away with stupid shanks.
 

P_Agony

Banned
Fed must be regretting those charity points and games he threw in the 2nd set. And his serve % was low throughout. He should have used a strategy of making the big guy cover more court side to side to exhaust him. And finally, Fed ran out of gas in the 5th cuz he is entering the twilight of his career.

He didn't run out of gas, his game was just not working. The gas was there, the engine wasn't.
 

TMF

Talk Tennis Guru
He hit more winners then Federer. I can't remember a non-clay slam match that Fed hit less winners then his opponents(Rafa prob hit more winners in 2008 FO). Can anyone remember the last time it happened?

It had to take TMF a really, really bad day for someone to hit more winners. Serving 50% sure help Del Potro to add up all of those winners in 5 sets, but still, Del Potro only had a few more winners.
 

BreakPoint

Bionic Poster
IMO Fed blew himself away in this match. Fed had a set up and served for the 2nd and blew that.
He then was reluctant to used the stuff that works on DP.
Rushing the net , short angles and slices. He went away from that. Stupid Fed.
Exactly! The way to beat Delpo is not to give him any rhythm, but hit short chip slices, drop shots, mix up the pace and spins on groundies, move him side-to-side and back-and-forth, chip and charge off of his second serves, mix in serve and volley, etc. This is the strategy that Federer has used in the past against him to great success, beating him all 6 times they've played, including that 6-3, 6-0, 6-0 beatdown at this year's AO, the last time they played on hardcourts. In fact, in 6 meetings, Delpo had never gotten even a set off of Federer until this year's FO, and we know Federer is more vulnerable on clay than on hardcourts. If you let Delpo get into a rhythm, he'll just pound away from the baseline like he did to Cilic and Nadal.

For some reason, Federer stopped doing all of the above and started hitting everything to Delpo's big forehand. What kind of bizarre strategy is that to hit everything to your opponent's biggest weapon instead of doing what has worked in the past or even just making the big man run out wide to hit running 2HBH's, which are very tough to hit consistently?

All I can say is that Federer must have had a massive brain cramp out there, i.e., cerebral paralysis. :shock:
 
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