Znak
Hall of Fame
Racquet Magazine published this today, I thought it was interesting — pulled some interesting graphs/quotes. The full spreadsheet can be found here. I find it wild they have nearly the same career win rate percentage:
In recent years Djokovic has dominated Nadal on hard courts (Djokovic’s favourite surface), and perhaps the biggest reason for this comes down to their serve and return dynamic. On return, Nadal has a career break-of-serve rate on hard courts of 29%. Against Djokovic it’s more than cut in half at just 14%. Essentially Djokovic, specifically since 2013, hasn’t had much more difficulty holding serve against Nadal on hard courts than he has against the field as a whole! This is actually pretty extraordinary and gives some more context as to why Nadal has broken Djokovic’s serve just twice on hard courts across their last 9 meetings dating back to Beijing 2013.
Nadal and Djokovic ace each other at a higher rate than either of them ace Federer. A possibility is that Federer and his single hander is a bit better at at least getting his racquet to some of Nadal’s lefty, wide serves on the AD side than Djokovic’s two hander. Combined with the fact that Federer tends to stand quite close to the baseline on return, possibly helping him cut off that angle out wide and at least touch some of Rafa’s swinging serves.
Nadal makes a huge dent in both Federer and Djokovic’s performance on clay (his favourite surface). Whilst Djokovic and Federer both have similar sorts of rivalry impacts on their own preferred surfaces against the other two (grass for Federer and hard for Djokovic), Nadal is particularly impactful, across both serve and return, against both his biggest rivals. Particularly notable is Nadal knocking 16% off Djokovic’s hold-of-serve rate and 11% off his break-of-serve rate and Nadal knocking off huge chunks on both hold-of-serve rate (-17%) and break-of-serve rate (-9%) against Federer.
In recent years Djokovic has dominated Nadal on hard courts (Djokovic’s favourite surface), and perhaps the biggest reason for this comes down to their serve and return dynamic. On return, Nadal has a career break-of-serve rate on hard courts of 29%. Against Djokovic it’s more than cut in half at just 14%. Essentially Djokovic, specifically since 2013, hasn’t had much more difficulty holding serve against Nadal on hard courts than he has against the field as a whole! This is actually pretty extraordinary and gives some more context as to why Nadal has broken Djokovic’s serve just twice on hard courts across their last 9 meetings dating back to Beijing 2013.
Nadal and Djokovic ace each other at a higher rate than either of them ace Federer. A possibility is that Federer and his single hander is a bit better at at least getting his racquet to some of Nadal’s lefty, wide serves on the AD side than Djokovic’s two hander. Combined with the fact that Federer tends to stand quite close to the baseline on return, possibly helping him cut off that angle out wide and at least touch some of Rafa’s swinging serves.
Nadal makes a huge dent in both Federer and Djokovic’s performance on clay (his favourite surface). Whilst Djokovic and Federer both have similar sorts of rivalry impacts on their own preferred surfaces against the other two (grass for Federer and hard for Djokovic), Nadal is particularly impactful, across both serve and return, against both his biggest rivals. Particularly notable is Nadal knocking 16% off Djokovic’s hold-of-serve rate and 11% off his break-of-serve rate and Nadal knocking off huge chunks on both hold-of-serve rate (-17%) and break-of-serve rate (-9%) against Federer.
Last edited:
