As I write this I'm watching Serbian Novak Djokovic soundly beat Russian Igor Andreev on his way to becoming this year's third French Open semi-finalist. Yesterday Federer beat Tommy Robredo and Davydenko fairly tortured Guillermo Canas in the top bracket quarterfinals. Nadal plays today against Carlos Moya, his Mallorcan friend and mentor, in a battle of past champions. I can't imagine that match being close. All this to say that we are a couple of matches away from seeing what we were hoping for when we started out a week and a half a go, the latest chapter in the epic war between Nadal and Federer...
If you've just been watching the scores go by, it is easy to assume that what Nadal and Federer have done to this year's draw has been, well, easy. And while it has looked that way, I thought I would take this blog as an opportunity to remind the reader how difficult tennis is to play and how good all the players in the draw are at playing it.
Yesterday The Tennis Channel broadcast the Serena Williams/Justine Henin match and Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe shared the announcers' booth for the occasion. Serena did not play well. There was a moment in the first set when she came to net behind a huge forehand. Henin sliced soft and waist high to Serena's forehand and Serena tried a cross court drop volley that turned into what Martina called a "lob drop volley... don't try this at home." Mac said it was most hackers' favorite shot, and I guffawed my mouthful of tea all over my lap remembering how many crosscourt lob drop volleys I have hit in my career.
If you're a tennis player, you can probably remember a similar moment. You have just opened up a well played point by taking a short forehand and driving it deep to your opponent's backhand. You know that the right play is to follow the ball to the net and so you do, but without quite the alacrity you should. Your opponent gets to the ball and hits a slice backhand down the line. It's exactly the shot you expected but it's infuriatingly low. You can't just bang it away. What you need to do is to split step firmly, bend your legs so that your head is level with the ball, keep your wrist extremely firm, and cut the side of the ball with a short punch, effecting a crosscourt volley that dies short enough so that even if you get the angle wrong you win. But you don't do that. You don't bend. You don't decide what to do, and at the last minute you think maybe that you, like McEnroe or Navratilova, can take the pace of the ball by dropping your wrist and catching the ball lightly on your strings. You see the shot happen in the instant before contact-which incidentally is when you should be watching the ball-and what you see is beautiful. Then the ball hits your racket and the result is a crosscourt lob drop volley that your opponent, whose foot is stuck in the fence, sees early enough to get unstuck, run all the way across the court, and pound down the line for a gifted winner.
Don't be shy. If it could happen to Serena, it could happen to you. Martina used the opportunity to point out that Serena would help her own cause by practicing a bit more and warming up a bit better. I used the moment to marvel at the fact that two of the games greatest players have become two of the games greatest announcers. And to contemplate how small the margin for error is in the game of tennis. Had Serena, her poor preparation aside, dropped her wrist a fraction of a second earlier and caught the ball a fraction of an inch farther in front of her, she might have hit the type of soft drop volley that we've seen with jaw-dropping regularity from Martina or Mac.
All of which points to the fact that tennis is a game of precise movement and the slightest lapse of concentration can be the difference between a winning shot and an error. On red clay winners are so hard to come by that if a player hits as many winners as unforced errors, they've had a good match. An extremely defensive player, over the course of a four set match, would like to keep both numbers in the teens. The reality is that most players at the French, when they win, hit nearly twice as many unforced errors as winners. Let me throw some numbers at you. In yesterday's match Federer hit 33 winners and made 31 unforced errors while Robredo hit 11 winners on 35 errors. In Monday's fourth round match Nadal hit 12 winners on 24 unforced errors and Hewitt hit 14 winners on 37 errors.
The two sets of numbers ultimately tell two different stories with a similar result. Both Nadal and Federer force their opponents to play at an uncomfortable level of play that forces them to hit too many errors. To show the contrast in statistics between red clay and grass, in last year's four-set Wimbledon final Federer hit 43 winners on 32 errors to Nadal's 42 on 26.
Neither of those matches was even close. Davydenko's number of errors and winners were perfect for him. He dictated nearly every point, hitting a high number of winners. Canas played safe, chasing balls down and muscling them with heavy topspin back down the center. He waited for Davydenko to lose rhythm and it never happened. I was blown away by the power Davydenko displayed. He has always been quick, solid, and tactical, but he is hitting very hard from both sides now and will certainly force Federer to lift his game.
The Djokovic/Andreev match was a case of what John McPhee called, Levels of the Game. Tennis, he says, is a game of levels, and a player at one level cannot compete with a player at another level. Andreev is an unranked player coming off injury and a tough draw and he did not have anything left to compete with Djokovic. They finished in a statistical deadheat but Djokovic didn't have to hit winners to win points. Watching Djokovic and Nadal will be interesting. The young Serb is cocky and energetic. He won't be intimidated by Nadal. But he hits very predictably and doesn't volley. He hits with huge power from both sides and is incredibly quick, but I expect the match will go the way most of Nadal's clay court matches go. The way of total demoralization for his opponent.
I will leave you with this exhortation: please do not count up your winners and errors the next time you play lest you be totally demoralized by what you find.
