falstaff78
Hall of Fame
I think this SF will be a lot closer than people are thinking. The following are cumulative stats from the first 5 rounds of RG 2017.
Nadal has utterly annihilated his opponents. However, without being noticed, Thiem has put up numbers which are almost as good. And he has done so against much stronger opposition.
Overall
Fatigue
Aggression
Serve
Return
Nadal has utterly annihilated his opponents. However, without being noticed, Thiem has put up numbers which are almost as good. And he has done so against much stronger opposition.
Overall
- Nadal and Thiem both perfect in sets. Nadal won higher proportion of games (78% vs. 69%).
- Thiem's opponents are stronger. In the last year, on clay, vs. middle-ranked players, Thiem's opponents won 71% of their matches. Nadal's opponents won 60%. This is a huge difference.
- Nadal leading Thiem 62% to 59% in points won. But this difference is almost entirely explained by opponent quality.
- Nadal won 72% of his service points. This was 6 p.p better than the top 20 vs. the same opponents on clay. Thiem also outperformed the top 20 by 6 p.p on serve.
- Nadal won an ungodly 55% of return points vs. 49% for Thiem. However Thiem's opponents were servebots by comparison to Nadal's (losing 5p.p. fewer points on serve vs. top 20). So while Nadal outperformed the top 20 by 12 p.p. on return, Thiem outperformed by almost as much. (11 p.p.).
Fatigue
- Won't be an issue for either guy. Thiem has played more points, but runs less per point. As a result he has only run 1 extra km (8 vs. 7)
Aggression
- Both men with similiar numbers of errors (106. vs. 88), but Thiem with far more clean winners (181 vs. 118).
- Neither coming to the net too much.
Serve
- Thiem's first serve has been a real weapon (84% pts won). Whereas Nadal's game has been independent of his serve. If anything his second serve is even better than his first (76% vs. 69%).
- Consistent with a bigger first serve, Thiem has served 3X more aces. But also more DFs.
- Nadal's opponents see BPs in slightly more unique games than Thiem's (17% vs. 15%), and they win slightly more games when they do see a BP (56% vs. 50%).
- Nadal has been quite unclutch saving BPs. He has saved 62%, which is 11 p.p. lower than the rate at which he won non-BPs on serve. Thiem has saved BPs at the same rate at which he wins other points.
Return
- Similiar on second serve return - Nadal a little better on first serve return. This is likely to be a function of Thiem playing bigger servers (see above)
- As pointed out by @Meles, Thiem's first serve return is a strength up against a relative weakness in Nadal's first serve.
- Both Nadal and Thiem put up crazy numbers on return. Seeing BPs in 72% and 63% of return games, and winning those games 92% and 73% of the time respectively.
- And that's despite the fact that both were somewhat un-clutch while facing break points.


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