Aabye5
G.O.A.T.
Because it's not very efficient. He ends expending a ton of energy in his early rounds, when he has many more weapons at his disposal. If you look at his title wins (all at indoor tournaments, notably), especially in Rotterdam, he was much more aggressive. Meanwhile, he spends many of his early round Slam matches just happy to rally. In his only USO match last year, he allowed Mackie McDonald to step into the court and blast winners, and it was a similar game plan at the AO (against Ruusuvuori) and Wimbledon in 2022.
It's proven to be costly for him as he rarely gets through his first few rounds at majors without dropping a set. He's playing like Rafa out there, when he should be playing more like Federer (neither is a great comparison but you get the idea). Is it ironic that he made it two clay finals playing inside the court in 2019 and yet now only has a 50% win/loss record on the surface even with Uncle Toni on his team?
Look at his stance (even on CLAY) early in his career, look at how deploys the dropshot and how often he finishes points off at the net:
And in Rotterdam:
Now, look at his match at the USO last year, just baseline rally after rally, not sure there's a single slice and few volleys. No creativity, really:
Mackie is an interesting opponent, because he is probably the closest player to Andre Agassi on Tour right now. You don't play baseline ping-pong with Mackie, because he loves it. You can draw him into the net, you can watch his position very closely and drag him out wide, but if you give him anything to tee off on, he just lines it up perfectly.
But he's not the only opponent who can exploit FAA's baseline position and rushed approach shots. Federer was famous for waiting that extra millisecond to ensure he had an open court, but FAA tends to rush through them at times hitting it right back to his opponent.
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