Serve & Return
Skimming over both players serving superbly. For Roddick, the 70% in count is particularly impressive, given how hard he sends down his first serve. His second serves are also powerful - much more so than Federer's.
The returning - particularly Roddick's - has room for improvement. Significant lot of Federer's first serves are near enough regulation placed, in swing zone or coverable by a step - and unlike Rod, his serve isn't overwhelmingly fast.
15/38 Roddick return errors have been marked unforced or 39%. For Federer, the figure is 20/68 or 29%. Even 'regulation' returns on grass aren't gimmes. Room for improvement for Roddick, not amounting to a blackmark. Some for Fed too
Great credit to both for low double faults - again, more Roddick. Both have just 4 in virtually same number of 2nd serves (Fed 70, Roddick 71)
There area few reasons for the large discrepancy in aces. Fed has humongous 51, to Roddick's sizable 27 (+ 3 service winners). Roddick serves more to the body (11% to 5%), forcing errors but not likely to go for aces. Fed places his serves out wide - particularly to FH in deuce court - much better. Most of all, the movement of the returners
Fed steps around on light feet to get racquet on ball. Roddick's often stone as the aces go by
Finally, there's a small amount of tanking returns by Roddick, enough to account for 3-7 aces. Well down in games, he makes no effort to play the ball when its wide
While Fed returns best he can, there are areas Roddick can do better. He obviously has no read on the serve... why not just guess and move to one side or the other? If he's wrong, ball goes through for an ace - which its already doing very large amount of the time. If he's right, he has much better shot at making the return. With Fed winning 89% first serve points - mostly through unreturned serves, but also drawing weak returns that he can putaway or at least, command - there's no down side to guessing and moving from Roddick's point of view. Instead, he plays ball through the air and can get little down against it
Healthy as Fed's 2nd serve is - though overshadowed by the power of Roddick's - its rarely weapon level strong and predictably directed to Rod's BH. Attacking it with big cut returns is doable. Roddick makes next to no attempt, and returns orthodoxly firmly, leaving Fed with oppurtunity to command third ball. As Fed dominates play from even neutral positions, let alone one's where he has initiative - onus is on Rod to do something proactive with the return. He doesn't.
Contrast to the '04 final when he looked to put the aggressively take on the 2nd serves, with reasonable success. Attacking returning might be beyond Rod's ability - and its no easy task against Fed's good 2nd serve. The alternative of returning orthodoxly and allowing play to unfold as Fed dictate is what he goes with it. It doesn't work and he wins just 40% 2nd serve return points
Good, solid returning by Fed against 2nd serves. He doesn't attack with the return either - it would be harder to against Roddick's bigger delivery - but he doesn't need to as much since he's got better of rallies, and wins 56% 2nd serve return points
Strategy & Play - Baseline (& Net)
There are differences in the way 2 players approach play, all of which lies in context of unreturned serves doing most of the work in holding for both players
Roddick is content to keep ball in play off the ground and looks to come to net to attack. Federer stays on baseline more, looks to stay solid and work over Roddick's BH while throwing out point finishing FHs
On the FH, Federer has a huge advantage in all areas. In neutral rallies, he hits harder and is able to lash the odd ball to take charge. Rod is relegated to counter-punching. FH UEs are dead even at 23, but Fed's shot ends points or gives him charge to a far greater degree. It also doesn't take too much to draw an error out of Roddick... a bit extra wide or deeper does the trick. Roddick's rarely able to get similar shots of to test Federer with. Fed with match high 35 winners - 1 more than Roddick's total winners, 20 of which are FHs. Roddick's winners tend to be set up by big serves or putaway shots. Fed has all that going for him + shot making out of near regulation positions to boot. And it not taking too forceful a shot to get errors out of Roddick
Roddick's BH is the only real weak link on show. Fed works it over some with BH cc's and mild FH inside-outs. 31 BH UEs from Rod. He struggles against slices, which are excellent and stay low, but looks like a problem in technique on Roddick's end as much as anything. Fed's BH has match low 19 UEs... its solid enough, but more discredit to Roddick's BH than credit to Fed's in this particular exchange
Solidity, more than aggression marks baseline play and UEFI's are surprisingly low and near equal (Fed 45.5, Rod 45.1). Breakdown of errors -
- Neutral - Fed 27, Rod 34
- Attacking - Fed 10, Rod 17
- Winner attempts - Fed 7, Rod 6
Both players making about half as many attacking UEs as they force errors (Fed forces 21, Rod 33) is a decent outcome
Fed with advantage in basic neutral consistency. Rod's FH UEs tend to be on hard side for being UEs (on the move, or against deep-ish balls), the BHs which make up the bulk area problem for him
Tremendous efficiency from Fed on the winners front since he has 52 winners to 7 UEs going for them. He picks and chooses when to go for the kill shot, looking to work Roddick's BH over first or to set up the final shots. Its a balanced and sensible showing from him. Roddick's number is also very good to (34 winners to 6 UEs trying). Most of his winners are set up by the serve or net points... and in neutral rallies, he's usually pushed into reactive position
Roddick makes 11 UEs (5 FH, 6 BH) in the last 4 games (Fed 0) when fatigue more than anything about his game seems to be the cause. Sans that small period, UEs read -
- Federer 44 (23 FH, 19 BH, 2 FHV)
- Roddick 46 (18 FH, 25 BH, 3 BHV)
Just about even, and a reasonably clean showing from both players
Somewhat
oddly, Roddick primarily approaches to Federer's FH. Likely because he's most confident in his FH cc. Given its fragility in play, it'd be asking for trouble to trust to his BH and he barely hits a FH dtl all match... so by default, he comes in behind FH cc's to Federer's very strong FH side. Wouldn't come as a surprise to see that end disastrously - given general strength of Fed's FH and Roddick's volleying - but it goes ok. Fed's FH has match high 19 FEs and most would be passing shots. Putting that in perspective, Roddick has 21 FEs total and Fed's non-FH FEs total 14. Rod's not faced with difficult volleys and good lot of Fed's 8 baseline-to-net passing winners are points he's drawn Roddick forward with short slices
Plenty of scope for Fed to come in more, though not much reason as he dominates the baseline. Curiously, Roddick's choppy BH fires on the pass. He knocks off 3 winners early in first set, which might have a hand in keeping Fed back (not that it matters much)
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Summing up, highly serve dominated match that pivots on a small number of crucial points. Its a tricky one to interpret and best remembered for Roddick missing an easy BHV on set point and more broadly, choking away 2nd set tiebreak (misses regulation return, misses 2 first serves after having barely missed all set, misses regulation BH on set point though that's not uncommon for him) that would have left him 2 sets to love up
Its more the case that Roddick's fairly lucky to have gotten deep enough into the match where he's in a position to have blown chances of winning it, with Federer having been superior in virtually all areas of the game. The serving is about a wash, Federer returns significantly better with there being scope for Roddick to have done more on the 2nd shot, Federer is a lot better off the ground - in attack, in defence, of solidity, of shotmaking - and Roddick's left to dangerously approach to Federer's FH to give his game teeth
All that's in context of thorough serve domination from both players. Roddick plays cleanly enough to hold without much trouble (though not as little as Federer) and takes his few chances and thwarts Federer's all the way to the end, when he's physically spent. Match could go either way. For it to have gone Roddick's way would have entailed a disproportionate hand from chance.
Good showing from both - Fed balanced in his attacking play and smartly exploiting Roddick's weak BH, Roddick playing quite cleanly and bold enough to attack net with success - and great serving to the extent of making it a 'serve-botty' encounter. Fed comfortably better overall, but not enough to guarantee the result, a few crucial points shaping sets and Roddick out of gas at the end allowing Fed to get over
@RS - thoughts?
Stats for pair's '04 final -
Match Stats/Report - Federer vs Roddick, Wimbledon final, 2004 | Talk Tennis (tennis-warehouse.com)
Stats for the '08 final between Federer and Rafael Nadal -
Match Stats/Report - Nadal vs Federer, Wimbledon final 2008 | Talk Tennis (tennis-warehouse.com)
