What about the Spencer? Do you enjoy her tennis abilities in the Slam finals?
I don't believe we haven't argued Dimis forehand in 2021 have we?
I don't think there's any question that he's taller.
DNA
Both roughly equal imo, but Dimi had a much higher ceiling.
I didn't mean to imply Kei isn't the better returner, he is. But I feel his return is underwhelming for the supposed type of player he is at the top level, if you say compare him to Ferrer his return stats are a LOT worse.dunno
I'd say Grigor is indeed a bit better at the extreme scrambles with his athleticism, but he is certainly also more likely to break down and err if a rally is extended and he is put on the defensive. The one area where he does have a meaningful edge on Kei is in their +1 game behind serve, where Grigor at his best simply has more authority with both the serve and forehand (74% vs 71% won, and hits a winner 25% vs 18%, which is a big difference). On return, Kei is actually superior to him in every single rally length category. Perhaps surprisingly, the meaningful difference between their forehand groundstrokes isn't that Grigor hits more winners or forces more errors, but that he hits fewer errors while doing the same amount of offensive damage. On their backhands, the script is flipped, which is expected.
HahaThis is the Spencer. Her peak level is probably higher than Fedalovic's peak level.
Always unsure how to interpret rally length stats, cause with guys like Karlovic etc you're just gonna have an insane amount of survivorship bias there, it takes rallies often to be neutral for a little bit to even make it to 9 shots, etc.I agree.
It is noteworthy that both of them have <50% success in shorter rallies and generally do better as the rallies go on (more so for Kei).
Put briefly, both of them essentially have both too weak serves and returns for their level and games. Which sucks for them, seeing as shorter points make up the bulk of tennis matches. The very best players may differ somewhat in how much their strength is toward serving or returning, but what they all have in common, even the supposedly 'defensive ones', is that they do very well in the all-important shorter rally categories (1-3 and 4-6).
Notice especially the great myth of the pusher Andy Murray, who in reality relies the most on his success in shorter rallies.
It is very interesting to me that Kei outdoes pretty much all of these guys in the extended rallies. But they all crush him between 1–6 shots.
I probably only see it for single matches, where you just get big sample sizing issues and where long rallies tend can often look remarkably 50/50 when the match is won in 4 to 6 shot rallies.
Dimitrov by a mile
Dimitrov is the first player to prove to me that you CAN in fact win the WTF with a weak draw. Never thought it was possible.
Even 2005 was much better than that as the players were more elite than what you had in 2017.
Not like Dimi's style is capable of that feat anyway.
Well at least he could catch fire and beat a few good opponents in a row. Can't see Kei doing that as his game involves too much grinding against even weaker players.
And now we're seeing that with his Next gen counterpart, Shapovalov.
Dimitrov is/was one of the best movers in the game at his peak. I'd give him the edge over Nishikori in that department, although Kei is no slouch either.
