Nadal: “Now tennis is mostly about power. I would like to see more different gamestyles. Tactic doesn't exist anymore."

leodevlin said:
And what exactly is Nadal's game style? Isn't he the one relying on very heavy top spin , high and fast balls? Respect to Nadal but his game has anything but variety.
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Nadal and Djokovic have more variety than 90% of the top tour players atm. Nadal was drop shotting, serve volleying, slicing tonnes and varying height, pace etc constantly during the AO final for example. Djokovic’s volleying is much better than it used to be and he drop shots far more now than he used too (even though they kinda suck lol)
 
emperors-new-groove-kronk.gif


I mean he’s just saying what the vast majority of people here are saying, lol.
 
Purestriker said:
He isn't wrong and his game doesn't have a lot of variety either.
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UnforcedTerror said:
Bull only knows how to moonball spam muggy BHs until he gets an error or a short ball and he seems to think he's a tactical genius lmao :-D :-D
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bostontennis said:
his game started with power. guess he is getting old and younger players have more power and that makes him feel insecure.
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For future reference, commenting “I don’t watch tennis” would have saved you a few words
 
bostontennis said:
his game started with power. guess he is getting old and younger players have more power and that makes him feel insecure.
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He did a lot of dropshots since the beginning and always had a pretty decent slice.

He's trying to pass along the lesson Vilas once taught him I guess.

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Quickie translation, highly paraphrased

When you just bash the ball deep into the open court, every opponent knows just to stay behind the baseline and run. But when you alternate short and long, high and low, right and left, that's when you get into the opponent's head.

—Guillermo Vilas to Rafa Nadal, 2004
 
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Nadal won an indoor Masters at 19 and reached 3 Wimbledon finals by age 22. I think he’s got variety inherently, he’s a real tennis player not just a baseline bot. Djokovic as well is better at the “in the lines” stuff than basically anyone on tour, sure his volleys look awkward but they’re effective and he’s incredible at handling drop shots, passing shots, etc.
 
Pretty sure Nadal is saying he'd like the conditions be made slower, him and his uncle have said that in the past also.
Rafa.... The conditions are more physical and slower than ever, absolutely perfect for you, it's just your form that's struggling, the conditions are not fast. You should be glad that the conditions are slower than when you were young, so even with your decreased footspeed you can counterpunch and defend successfully.

aldeayeah said:
He did a lot of dropshots since the beginning and always had a pretty decent slice.
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That alone doesn't refute what that person said at all. His core game has always been about physicality, through his heavy topspin and defending/counterpunching.
 
Third Serve said:
tbf Ned has always played the good tennis

not SexiFed good but not bad either
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If you define the good tennis as variety e.g. aggressive baselining, netplay, slice, dropshots etc...then it's definitely not always. He has steadily added more dimensions to his game over time (though he did use the dropshot a fair bit early on) but the amount of netplay in his formative years and really most of his prime was fairly low. Of course he's generally always had good hands but it was more an X factor then core part of his winning ways until fairly recently IMO.
 
NatF said:
If you define the good tennis as variety e.g. aggressive baselining, netplay, slice, dropshots etc...then it's definitely not always. He has steadily added more dimensions to his game over time (though he did use the dropshot a fair bit early on) but the amount of netplay in his formative years and really most of his prime was fairly low. Of course he's generally always had good hands but it was more an X factor then core part of his winning ways until fairly recently IMO.
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mainly just referring to the quality of the viewing experience, but it is true that early on Nadal didn’t have a whole lot of variety
 
So basically he is making the same statement as Tsitsipas - they succeed despite their limited tools. It would have sounded more sincere if he had said this after a victory.
 
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StringStrungStrang said:
So basically he is making the same statement as Tsitsipas - they succeed despite their limited tools. It would have sounded more sincere if he had said this after a victory.
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i think tsitsipas doesnt know how to play either. he has the tools but doesnt know what to do with them..
ruud apparently has very little tools but he seems to know how to play
 
I actually think the youngest generation (Alcaraz, Rune...) actually have more variety than the previous gens after the big 3. They use more of the court. Sure they need to have better skills to play with variety but at least they don't just hug the baseline (like a Ferrer) nor do they only have a net game (like Dreddy).
 
Third Serve said:
mainly just referring to the quality of the viewing experience, but it is true that early on Nadal didn’t have a whole lot of variety
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Fair enough. Nadal has always been a great shotmaker, though I do think his patterns of play have often times been a bit boring but I can understand why people enjoy watching him.
 
Frankly, Nadal doesn't come to the net enough for a competent volleyer. People harp about how great a volleyer he is but he rarely is up there enough to make a real difference on faster surfaces. When you look at the big 3 net approaches, Nadal comes to the net far less than Federer or Djokovic. I think that's part of the reason he has failed at Wimbledon. So not sure about others who think he has a ton of variety besides the slice and occasional dropshot, and changing of his spins. His game is 70-75% power/spin which is how he beats most players, especially on clay and higher bouncing surfaces, because they struggle to deal with it.
 
jl809 said:
Nadal and Djokovic have more variety than 90% of the top tour players atm. Nadal was drop shotting, serve volleying, slicing tonnes and varying height, pace etc constantly during the AO final for example. Djokovic’s volleying is much better than it used to be and he drop shots far more now than he used too (even though they kinda suck lol)
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Boy I agree; Djokovic needs to stop and at least lessen the drop shops. He hardly ever loses an overhead now, but the drop shots are cringeworthy at times.
 
NoleFam said:
Frankly, Nadal doesn't come to the net enough for a competent volleyer. People harp about how great a volleyer he is but he rarely is up there enough to make a real difference on faster surfaces. When you look at the big 3 net approaches, Nadal comes to the net far less than Federer or Djokovic. I think that's part of the reason he has failed at Wimbledon. So not sure about others who think he has a ton of variety besides the slice and occasional dropshot, and changing of his spins. His game is 70-75% power/spin which is how he beats most players, especially on clay and higher bouncing surfaces, because they struggle to deal with it.
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Well, he has always been further behind the baseline and so harder to get to the net if you have to take an extra 2 steps. Also, with the powerful 6 6 players, their passing shots are so hard that it is harder to control.
 
Nadal benefitted from the surfaces all starting to play the same around 05-07 i.e. slow. I suspect in my own mind they did this get the same top four competing at the back end of all events to get people excited about rivalries (instead of having Nadal, for example, only turn up on clay).

Over time though - possibly in a move to keep Federer on the tour as long as possible - I almost feel they've gone the other way and aimed for speed. It's curious how Federer suddenly started feeling his grove again.

Nadal has struggled off clay as late, and yes, some of that is down to age. The Australian Open win felt more like a brave upset victory than something that was likely to happen.

Also note though that Alcaraz is struggling to back up his US Open win. The big servers seem to be back in business these days.

In short, Nadal IMO has benefitted and suffered at various stages of his career from changes to balls and surfaces etc.
 
NoleFam said:
Frankly, Nadal doesn't come to the net enough for a competent volleyer. People harp about how great a volleyer he is but he rarely is up there enough to make a real difference on faster surfaces. When you look at the big 3 net approaches, Nadal comes to the net far less than Federer or Djokovic. I think that's part of the reason he has failed at Wimbledon. So not sure about others who think he has a ton of variety besides the slice and occasional dropshot, and changing of his spins. His game is 70-75% power/spin which is how he beats most players, especially on clay and higher bouncing surfaces, because they struggle to deal with it.
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This has always puzzled me. Some well-respected commentators will even go so far as to say Nadal is the best volleyer on tour, and while he is a good volleyer and historically has an excellent win rate on net points (owing mostly to the undeniable quality of his approach shots), he's always seemed a bit heavy-handed to me. And if truly were the best volleyer on tour (or close to it), he'd certainly come to net more often than he does, right?
 
Purestriker said:
He would dominate on clay. The court speeds would make it difficult on grass and hard courts.
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Courier won two Australian Opens, was a Wimbledon finalist, a US Open finalist, a two-time Masters Cup finalist.
If he could achieve that with his limited game, I'm sure Nadal would have achieved "something" more in that era than the American.
:D
 
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Maybe a matter of semantics, but is it that Nadal varies his game more per se or is he just better at employing the variety he does have?


Based even just on this years charted matches alone, Rafa is middle of the pack in net and drop shot frequency, above average in slice frequency and still has some of the more extreme serve direction splits on tour.

Top that off with his consistently, obstinately deep returning position…and I don’t think his patterns of play are particularly more varied.

It is more so that he is better at the shots that are usually associated with ‘variety’ (slice, volley, drop shots), than most of the topspin-drivebots on tour.


But again, whether you wanna call that a distinction without a difference is up to you.
 
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daggerman said:
This has always puzzled me. Some well-respected commentators will even go so far as to say Nadal is the best volleyer on tour, and while he is a good volleyer and historically has an excellent win rate on net points (owing mostly to the undeniable quality of his approach shots), he's always seemed a bit heavy-handed to me. And if truly were the best volleyer on tour (or close to it), he'd certainly come to net more often than he does, right?
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Yea he obviously is a good volleyer but I always thought the best on tour was a stretch. I always thought it was Federer based on the frequency of approaching and his skills on the difficult volleys. Just a random statistic is he played about 340 points against Fritz at Wimbledon and approached the net less than Djokovic who only played about 260 points against Sinner. Both were highly successful but Djokovic is up there more. Had he ended points up there more often, he might not have struggled as much against Fritz.
 
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