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Hall of Fame
Disclaimer: I am not a fan of Djokovic, and I didn't write this post as part of some 'my guy is better than your guy' war of attrition. The biggest reason I created this post is to enhance my own understanding of the subject matter. I'm just thinking out loud, so I could be wrong about all of this. Feedback is welcome.
There's no point in discussing Djokovic's great hold game, other than to point out that it's all about placement and ball action rather than, as it was in his younger days, raw power. I'll be interested to see Djokovic's hold percentages once the early part of 2018 is eliminated from the dataset, because if my guess is right, he'll be in the top 5 on the tour.
I will focus instead on the return game. Recently, an article appeared on the ATP website written by one of Djokovic's coaches, Craig O’Shannessy, about how Djokovic is determined to play shorter rallies and win the large majority of them (no more than 5 shots):
https://www.atpworldtour.com/en/news/djokovic-shanghai-2018-brain-game
At this point, we need to explain why Djokovic's strategy cannot be effectively executed by anyone else, and why he wins so damned much. As I see it, it's all about inside shots vs. outside shots and change of direction -- here I am indebted to Wardlaw's Directionals. According to the Directionals, in the abstract, there are two kinds of players -- court splitters and players with a weapon. The latter is defined as a player who relies heavily on one shot, usually a forehand, to take control of, and win tennis points. The former is a player who is equally good from both sides. Clearly, although Djokovic likes to hit forehands, he's a court splitter if there ever was one.
According to the information Wardlaw used to develop his Directionals, most errors happen during changes of ball direction. The safest shots to hit in tennis are cross court ground strokes where the ball is already going in that direction. Wardlaw set up some rules to specify when it was relatively safe to change the ball's direction. In his view, it is the player who changes direction who gains control of the tennis point and can then dictate.
Wardlaw's rules on direction changes are based on the concept of inside and outside shots. An outside shot is the most common form of tennis groundstroke. In an outside shot, the ball crosses the body from one side to the other. For example, a right-handed forehand hit from the right side of the court (deuce side) is an outside shot. Conversely, a right-handed backhand hit from the left side of the court (ad side) is an outside shot. However, when the court positions are reversed, for example a right-handed forehand hit from the ad side, that's now an inside shot. This is the shot, the mighty inside forehand, that most players use as their primary weapons. There are likely hundreds of Youtube video compilations of Federer, Nadal et al. hitting massive inside forehand winners. It is inside shots where Wardlaw recommends changing direction, because the body would find it awkward to rotate far enough to hit the ball up the line wide. It's much easier to hit an outside shot wide, since the shoulder rotation is already open and pointing that way. Wardlaw recommends players with a weapon change direction only when they can step into the court from inside positions. He recommends court splitters also change directions when they get a short ball. At the top of the ATP, many weapon players also change directions, or try to, on short balls, even if it's an outside shot.
The players know this. It's part of their training as youngsters and juniors. It's how they play. They don't like to play differently. Different patterns of play get them out of their 'comfort zone'. Djokovic knows that they know. I contend that he's so unstoppable because he mostly ignores the directional rules and, by superb execution, gets away with it.
Lets take a look at a couple of sequences on Coric's serve from the recent (as I'm writing this) Shanghai 2018 final. Coric lost in straights. Afterward, he described the experience, in broken English, as "not fun for me", or perhaps if he'd mastered the language more, "miserable", "tortuous", "arduous", "frustrating" and any number of additional adjectives.
Point one:
Coric serving in the near court. Djokovic hits a decent return, Coric steps in and hits a follow-up. What follows is a few high-percentage cross-court shots from each guy.
Djokovic steps in and redirects an outside backhand up the line. This is a 90 degree redirect. The ball is now orthogonal with the baseline. The ball Djokovic hit was not a short ball. This violates Wardlaw's rules, even for a court splitter. Djokovic has now taken control of the point from the middle of the court. Coric will have to move to hit the response.
Coric is playing defense. He hits a weak forehand, Djokovic follows up with an outside forehand angled even more sharply into the deuce corner, which prompts a weaker Coric forehand. Djokovic steps in and hits an angled backhand cross court. This is a high-percentage outside-out redirect, of the sort recommended by Wardlaw. Djokovic is still in the middle of the court, while Coric is running from side to side playing defense.
Djokovic moves to the net, cuts off Coric's weak defensive shot and volleys into the deuce corner, and Coric hits a forced error.
As the volley hits the court, you can see how far behind the ball Coric has gotten. I've tried to draw in some guide lines to illustrate the flow of this point. Djokovic has stayed in the middle, while Coric has been pulled to the sides, falling further and further behind the ball with each shot.
Point two:
Same game, Coric serves from the ad side, Djokovic hits an angled return to the corner, Coric moves in and hits a reply.
This time, Djokovic moves in and immediately hits a 90 degree redirect. Like the previous point, this is an outside backhand hit on a medium-length ball. Clearly, a violation of the Directionals. It's executed perfectly, and Djokovic is now in control of the point.
Coric is already so far behind the ball that all he can do is hit a lob.
Djokovic pounds a forehand into the deuce corner again, prompting another lob.
Djokovic steps in and hits an inside-out forehand that draws a forced error from Coric. This shot is a redirect, but one that conforms to the Directionals. An inside shot hit cross court over the low part of the net. I've also drawn some lines illustrating the geometry in play. Djokovic narrowed his court to the ad side only, and widened Coric's court. Coric is having to defend a much wider baseline than the physical dimensions of the court. This is the kind of prototypical point Djokovic wants to play on an opponent's serve. The rest of the tour would like to do this too, but would likely error out a lot more than Djokovic if they dared try it. FWIW, Djokovic broke Coric in this game.
HOW TO BEAT DJOKOVIC
Given all of these exceptional abilities, how would a player go about overcoming Djokovic? First, Djokovic doesn't always hit the right shot, or execute perfectly. Sometimes he just has a bad day. He's just as vulnerable to injury, illness, burnout, or ill-fitting conditions as any other player. That aside, I think any player needs to be realistic and concede a lot of breaks. It's therefore necessary to break Djokovic at least as much. This is proving to be increasingly difficult as Djokovic implements a Federer-like strategy on serve. If Djokovic is going to lose, it would probably be to a player with a great return game -- as I'm writing this, Nadal on clay, Schwartzman, Goffin, Murray. No offense to those guys, but I think Djokovic can break them almost at will. We really haven't seen, up until now, a court splitter with such a great offensive game, who could also defend the baseline like Djokovic. It shouldn't come as any surprise that he's just about unstoppable. Any player who outhits his opponent, more consistent court penetration, will win. This is how Stan has overcome Djokovic a few times. So far, nobody has been able to do this consistently. In sum, unless something extraordinary happens, like the 2015 RG final, or the occasional bad performance by Djokovic, he probably can't be beat.
There's no point in discussing Djokovic's great hold game, other than to point out that it's all about placement and ball action rather than, as it was in his younger days, raw power. I'll be interested to see Djokovic's hold percentages once the early part of 2018 is eliminated from the dataset, because if my guess is right, he'll be in the top 5 on the tour.
I will focus instead on the return game. Recently, an article appeared on the ATP website written by one of Djokovic's coaches, Craig O’Shannessy, about how Djokovic is determined to play shorter rallies and win the large majority of them (no more than 5 shots):
Djokovic won 20 more points than Coric for the match (72 to 52), and crafted 15 of them in rally lengths from one to five shots. That's a layer of our sport that matters more than we ever realised.
[...]
Our eyes would have us believe the recent rise of Djokovic (27-1 since the beginning of Wimbledon) is mainly due to dominance in the long rallies. It's not. He is back to being the apex predator hunting his hidden advantage in the 0-4 shot rally length. He forces mayhem in his opponents’ strokes and mind much more with serves and returns than by extending the rally.
[...]
Our eyes would have us believe the recent rise of Djokovic (27-1 since the beginning of Wimbledon) is mainly due to dominance in the long rallies. It's not. He is back to being the apex predator hunting his hidden advantage in the 0-4 shot rally length. He forces mayhem in his opponents’ strokes and mind much more with serves and returns than by extending the rally.
https://www.atpworldtour.com/en/news/djokovic-shanghai-2018-brain-game
At this point, we need to explain why Djokovic's strategy cannot be effectively executed by anyone else, and why he wins so damned much. As I see it, it's all about inside shots vs. outside shots and change of direction -- here I am indebted to Wardlaw's Directionals. According to the Directionals, in the abstract, there are two kinds of players -- court splitters and players with a weapon. The latter is defined as a player who relies heavily on one shot, usually a forehand, to take control of, and win tennis points. The former is a player who is equally good from both sides. Clearly, although Djokovic likes to hit forehands, he's a court splitter if there ever was one.
According to the information Wardlaw used to develop his Directionals, most errors happen during changes of ball direction. The safest shots to hit in tennis are cross court ground strokes where the ball is already going in that direction. Wardlaw set up some rules to specify when it was relatively safe to change the ball's direction. In his view, it is the player who changes direction who gains control of the tennis point and can then dictate.
Wardlaw's rules on direction changes are based on the concept of inside and outside shots. An outside shot is the most common form of tennis groundstroke. In an outside shot, the ball crosses the body from one side to the other. For example, a right-handed forehand hit from the right side of the court (deuce side) is an outside shot. Conversely, a right-handed backhand hit from the left side of the court (ad side) is an outside shot. However, when the court positions are reversed, for example a right-handed forehand hit from the ad side, that's now an inside shot. This is the shot, the mighty inside forehand, that most players use as their primary weapons. There are likely hundreds of Youtube video compilations of Federer, Nadal et al. hitting massive inside forehand winners. It is inside shots where Wardlaw recommends changing direction, because the body would find it awkward to rotate far enough to hit the ball up the line wide. It's much easier to hit an outside shot wide, since the shoulder rotation is already open and pointing that way. Wardlaw recommends players with a weapon change direction only when they can step into the court from inside positions. He recommends court splitters also change directions when they get a short ball. At the top of the ATP, many weapon players also change directions, or try to, on short balls, even if it's an outside shot.
The players know this. It's part of their training as youngsters and juniors. It's how they play. They don't like to play differently. Different patterns of play get them out of their 'comfort zone'. Djokovic knows that they know. I contend that he's so unstoppable because he mostly ignores the directional rules and, by superb execution, gets away with it.
Lets take a look at a couple of sequences on Coric's serve from the recent (as I'm writing this) Shanghai 2018 final. Coric lost in straights. Afterward, he described the experience, in broken English, as "not fun for me", or perhaps if he'd mastered the language more, "miserable", "tortuous", "arduous", "frustrating" and any number of additional adjectives.
Point one:
Coric serving in the near court. Djokovic hits a decent return, Coric steps in and hits a follow-up. What follows is a few high-percentage cross-court shots from each guy.
Djokovic steps in and redirects an outside backhand up the line. This is a 90 degree redirect. The ball is now orthogonal with the baseline. The ball Djokovic hit was not a short ball. This violates Wardlaw's rules, even for a court splitter. Djokovic has now taken control of the point from the middle of the court. Coric will have to move to hit the response.
Coric is playing defense. He hits a weak forehand, Djokovic follows up with an outside forehand angled even more sharply into the deuce corner, which prompts a weaker Coric forehand. Djokovic steps in and hits an angled backhand cross court. This is a high-percentage outside-out redirect, of the sort recommended by Wardlaw. Djokovic is still in the middle of the court, while Coric is running from side to side playing defense.
Djokovic moves to the net, cuts off Coric's weak defensive shot and volleys into the deuce corner, and Coric hits a forced error.
As the volley hits the court, you can see how far behind the ball Coric has gotten. I've tried to draw in some guide lines to illustrate the flow of this point. Djokovic has stayed in the middle, while Coric has been pulled to the sides, falling further and further behind the ball with each shot.
Point two:
Same game, Coric serves from the ad side, Djokovic hits an angled return to the corner, Coric moves in and hits a reply.
This time, Djokovic moves in and immediately hits a 90 degree redirect. Like the previous point, this is an outside backhand hit on a medium-length ball. Clearly, a violation of the Directionals. It's executed perfectly, and Djokovic is now in control of the point.
Coric is already so far behind the ball that all he can do is hit a lob.
Djokovic pounds a forehand into the deuce corner again, prompting another lob.
Djokovic steps in and hits an inside-out forehand that draws a forced error from Coric. This shot is a redirect, but one that conforms to the Directionals. An inside shot hit cross court over the low part of the net. I've also drawn some lines illustrating the geometry in play. Djokovic narrowed his court to the ad side only, and widened Coric's court. Coric is having to defend a much wider baseline than the physical dimensions of the court. This is the kind of prototypical point Djokovic wants to play on an opponent's serve. The rest of the tour would like to do this too, but would likely error out a lot more than Djokovic if they dared try it. FWIW, Djokovic broke Coric in this game.
HOW TO BEAT DJOKOVIC
Given all of these exceptional abilities, how would a player go about overcoming Djokovic? First, Djokovic doesn't always hit the right shot, or execute perfectly. Sometimes he just has a bad day. He's just as vulnerable to injury, illness, burnout, or ill-fitting conditions as any other player. That aside, I think any player needs to be realistic and concede a lot of breaks. It's therefore necessary to break Djokovic at least as much. This is proving to be increasingly difficult as Djokovic implements a Federer-like strategy on serve. If Djokovic is going to lose, it would probably be to a player with a great return game -- as I'm writing this, Nadal on clay, Schwartzman, Goffin, Murray. No offense to those guys, but I think Djokovic can break them almost at will. We really haven't seen, up until now, a court splitter with such a great offensive game, who could also defend the baseline like Djokovic. It shouldn't come as any surprise that he's just about unstoppable. Any player who outhits his opponent, more consistent court penetration, will win. This is how Stan has overcome Djokovic a few times. So far, nobody has been able to do this consistently. In sum, unless something extraordinary happens, like the 2015 RG final, or the occasional bad performance by Djokovic, he probably can't be beat.
Over 5 sets, Karlovic just wouldn't do squat.
