Controlling the middle of the court: Why Djokovic is so hard to beat
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MichaelNadal
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It was Andy that got me into tennis. Im exaggerating, but he really never hurt anyone outside of highlight reels.
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It annoys me when people say he had no weapons that's it. In his 07 USO QF match against Fed he played very, very aggressive tennis.
MichaelNadal
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To be top 10 and world #1 of course your talent has to be otherwordly. He was a legend.
I just mean in relation to others (especially his generation) he didn't have anything to hurt them with. Sure on a good day he could provide them with a difficult match, but there's a reason he couldn't win a slam in the 9 years he tried to after 2003.
mike danny
Bionic Poster
Wawrinka always pushes Novak to 5 or wins in 4. Given that Wawrinka is nowhere near as good as Novak in terms of ability and accomishments, this pretty much screams bad match-up.
Overall record doesn't matter. Djokovic's struggles with Wawrinka are visible.
mike danny
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Murray can unsettle them in BO3, but in BO5 his game is not imposing enough IMO. He basically plays Djokovic at his own game and Djokovic just does it better.So, no mention of Murray then? The only guy, other than Federer and Nadal, who has notched up double digit victories against Djokovic and more than twice as many as Wawrinka! Ay ay ay ay ay ay...and so it goes eh Mike?
tennisaddict
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LOL now I know you're trolling.
tennisaddict
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Djokovic was lucky that he played Federer 30 times since 2011.
We just have to accept facts as they are
NoleFam
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How you can you lead someone in the head to head 19-5 and it be a bad matchup? Let's me ask you this. Federer leads Del Potro 18-7 in the head to head, 5-2 in BO5, yet 3 of their matches have gone to 5 sets and one was a 4 set win for Del Potro, and the Olympic SF went to 19-17 in the 3rd, which is the equivalent to a 5 set match in number of games. Also, even their BO3 matches are close, usually Wawrinka/Djokovic BO3 matches are dominated by Novak, where 10 of them went to a deciding set and 3 of them were decided 7-5 and 7-6 in the third. Is this a bad matchup for Federer considering Del Potro is nowhere near as good as him in ability and accomplishments? Absolutely not. It means that Del Potro matches up well against him in certain conditions and the same for Wawrinka when it comes to Djokovic. You cannot win 80% of the matches against a player and it be considered a bad matchup.
mike danny
Bionic Poster
Wawinka is a bad match-up for Novak in BO5 IMO. Not overall.
With Fed-Delpo, it's different a bit. 2012 RG and 2017 USO matches aren't really indicative of anything especially given the circumstances.
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Delpo leads 4-2 Federer in finals.
NoleFam
Bionic Poster
Dude, there's nothing about the rivalry that is a bad matchup for Novak in any form. How can Wawrinka even say he is a bad matchup for him when he is 1-4 in 5 set matches? If he was actually winning more of those matches then you could say it was a bad matchup. When it goes to a 5th set, Djokovic wins 80% of the time.
There's nothing different about it. It's basically the same in fact. Why are they not indicative of anything since you are hellbent on counting USO 2016 when Novak was in poor form? This matchup is actually closer than Wawrinka/Djokovic yet it is different? You seem to be backpeddling now. Djokovic crushes his Del Potro head to head, never losing to him in a BO5, yet Federer's is closer. Federer crushes his Wawrinka head to head only having lost once in a BO5, yet Djokovic's is closer. Can't have it both ways.
mike danny
Bionic Poster
Fair enough.
The 5 set record is fully in Novak's favor, but Stan doesn't have to push it to 5 to win. There's a reason Novak is only 4-3 in BO5. It's more like Novak has to hope it goes 5 or else he might be screwed.
Maybe bad match-up was poor wording on my part, but it's clear Wawrinka is a very difficult opponent for Djokovic, similar to how Del Potro is for Federer. But with the latter, most of their matches occurred after Fed's prime, when he also started to struggle with other players. In Novak's case, it was mostly Stan who troubled him in that 3 year period of 2014-2016 when Novak was in his prime.
Im(moral) Winner
G.O.A.T.
NoleFam
Bionic Poster
Del Potro didn't have to push it to 5 to win either did he? Novak is 5-3 in BO5 against Wawrinka actually. You're reaching.
Lol at this part. You are moving that goal post and coming with excuses when the Del Potro/Federer matchup has been close since 2009.
mike danny
Bionic Poster
Fed-Delpo H2H at the end of AO 2010: 6-2.
You're the only one who denies that Djokovic struggles with Wawrinka. The fact that he has to win all their slam matches in 5 sets speaks volumes.
NoleFam
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Edited. I meant matchup.
mike danny
Bionic Poster
Ok, now look at my edited post too
NoleFam
Bionic Poster
How am I denying this when I said from the beginning that Wawrinka pushes Djokovic? It is your post that it's a bad matchup that's just blatantly incorrect. The head to head is lopsided. Just because someone pushes you and the matches are close does not make it a bad matchup.
mike danny
Bionic Poster
The way I perceive a bad match-up is when a clearly inferior player pushes you time and time again, not just once. Like Berdych was for Federer in 2010-2013.
NoleFam
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Your definition of a bad matchup and my definition are two different things.
mike danny
Bionic Poster
Then we have identified the problem.
AnOctorokForDinner
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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):
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.
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.
Good post and thank you for taking the trouble to do it. To cut a long story short Djokovic is very good at redirecting the rally.
I’ll always have visions of Murray working twice as hard as Djokovic in all those Aussie finals they played.
As someone else mentioned Niskikori redirects the rally well too, but his game falls short on pace and depth of shot and service games.
Mainad
Bionic Poster
Come on Mike. He beat him in TWO Slam finals. Who else has come anywhere near doing that apart from the 3 players you named?
Plus, the OP wasn't restricting the discussion to BO5 and the fact remains that, overall, Murray has been far more successful against Djokovic than any player not named Federer or Nadal.
mike danny
Bionic Poster
Fair enough.
NatF
Bionic Poster
Mainad
Bionic Poster
Going by this logic Federer's game unsettles Nadal
Well, it certainly unsettled him the last 4 times they met. He beat him 4 times in a row!
mike danny
Bionic Poster
5 times in a rowWell, it certainly unsettled him the last 4 times they met. He beat him 4 times in a row!
Mainad
Bionic Poster
Im(moral) Winner
G.O.A.T.
When Fraud plays well, yesGoing by this logic Federer's game unsettles Nadal
NatF
Bionic Poster
Fed is just a superior player outside of clay and can overcome the match up with scintillating tennis
abmk
Bionic Poster
@ bold part : really ? if anything, Djokovic played worse in the AO 2015 semi than in the RG 2015 final. He just got away with it because Wawrinka played worse and crumbled in the final set in AO 2015 semi.
Djokovic hit 27 winners, forced 58 errors and hit 49 UEs in the AO 2015 semi, i.e. 85 winners+errors forced to 49 UEs (+36)
Djokovic hit 30 winners, forced 42 errors and hit 41 UEs in the RG 2015 final, i.e 72 winners+errors forced to 41 UEs(+31).
the first one was on a clearly faster surface against a considerably worse Wawrinka.
Djokovic did/played better in their RG 2015 final match, was just up against a considerably superior Wawrinka.
the amount of bias in this is off the charts.
If anything, Djokovic was so lucky with the line call on a big point in AO 2013 4R.
Djokovic was down BP at 4 all in the 5th set. Stan had ripped a FH return that Djokovic could only muster a weak reply to. Was called out by linesman. Even umpire indicated it was out. Stan did not challenge (yeah, his fault as well).
Stan was in an excellent position to win that point if the out call was not made.
Its 3 all in slams from 2013-2016 b/w them with Wawrinka actually winning 15 sets to 13 sets for Djokovic.
in slams, he was tough for Djokovic in that time period.
abmk
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abmk
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RF-18
Talk Tennis Guru
AO 15 semi vs RG 15 final?
Yes, Id also say Djoko played better in the RG final. Wawrinka aswell. The AO semi was really terrible from both guys.
abmk
Bionic Poster
good on you for admitting that.
NatF
Bionic Poster
Yeah, was it the 4th set where Djokovic basically didn't hit any winners?
The match was kinda similar from Djokovic's side of the court, he was very passive (but more errors than at the FO) but in this case Stan wasn't dialled in either. Legit one of the worst five set matches between top players I've ever seen.
abmk
Bionic Poster
yeah, I'm sure those guys who called Roddick's FH as one of the biggest and most fearsome at his peak (esp. 2003-04) were dolts. But hey >> Andy got you into tennis, so you must be right
abmk
Bionic Poster
yes, 0 winners from Djokovic in the 4th set.
RF-18
Talk Tennis Guru
Yes, 0 winners and 12 UFE. Haven't seen the full match since it played out so I checked the stats and abstract says what I wrote above.
NatF
Bionic Poster
Pushovic.
Mainad
Bionic Poster
Gotta hand it to players called Andy although I was speaking of the active ones.
MichaelNadal
Bionic Poster
Zzzzzzzz. Hey boo
abmk
Bionic Poster
0 winners to 14 UEs according to official stats.
https://web.archive.org/web/2015020...n.com:80/en_AU/scores/stats/day17/1601ms.html
forced 16 errors from Stan. so ended up with 16 winners+errors forced to 14 UEs in that set.
