6 ms·

Why Nadal is unbeatable on clay

58 points by anacleto 7y ago

billforsternz 7y ago
I remember a Time magazine front cover article on Bjorn Borg in the late seventies (get off my lawn). One quote that stuck with me went something like this: "Borg's dominance is really exaggerated on clay courts. Borg v an average tour player on clay is like the Detroit Lions v a high school football team". Maybe there's something about clay that encourages individual dynasties. Edits: not any tour player, an average tour player, plus typo plus late seventies. Sorry
- addicted 7y ago
  Clay and grass to a lesser extent are more extreme surfaces, and they benefit certain types of players. Hard courts are far more neutral and allow for a wider range of styles to be competitive.
  - billforsternz 7y ago
    Indeed. And as the original article mentioned, clay rewards a player who can "be a wall" and just keep getting the ball back and not beat himself. The article mentioned Nadal's heavy topspin, and I think Borg actually pioneered that. It's the only way to to hit powerful strokes with a margin of safety. The ball clears the net easily but then dips and doesn't go long.
iamthirsty 7y ago
Why are lots of blog posts written like this nowadays—like an email, where every sentence is a new paragraph?
- ghaff 7y ago
  General trend towards what's considered easier casual readability. Shorter sentences. Shorter paragraphs. More and shorter posts. Smaller words. At one online publication I write for sometimes, the tool I use to enter my articles is always whining at me to drop the reading level down. I don't usually go as far as single sentence paragraphs but I've generally learned to shift most of what I write towards easier consumption.
- kartan 7y ago
  > where every sentence is a new paragraph? Probably because of blog software. Word Press does this by default. https://wordpress.org/support/article/wordpress-editor/ https://wordpress.org/support/article/wordpress-editor/
  - paulcole 7y ago
    Wordpress most definitely does not do this by default. Typing a period, a space, and then a capital letter to begin the next Steven ever does not start a new paragraph. You can even see in the screenshots on the link you provided that new sentences do not become new paragraphs.
- kd5bjo 7y ago
  If 80% of your readers are only going to pay attention to the pull quotes and tl;dr’s, why go to the trouble of writing anything else?
toyg 7y ago
This is hardly original, Nadal's game has been well-analysed for ages now. However, this is also why a lot of (most?) people prefer Federer to him: because Roger's game is more original and creative. It's a bit like Toyota vs Tesla: one will always sell more cars and make more money because it executes better, but that's not always the point.
- likeabbas 7y ago
  Highly disagree with your analysis of why most people prefer Federer to him. Most people prefer Federer because Fed was successful first, then Nadal. So, people were used to seeing Federer dominate and then Nadal came in. Nadal is far from a clay court specialist. 2x Wimbledon champ, 5x finalist. 3 US open titles, 1 Aussie open title and 4x finalist. Your metaphor of car manufacturers really doesn’t do Nadal justice. It’s more like incumbents always have the advantage, and the challenger always has a harder fight.
  - greatpatton 7y ago
    Yes but if you remove the French open victories from Nadal total (down to 6) total both Djokovic (down to 14) and Federer (down to 19) have more than twice (or even 3x times) the number of grand slam Victories. (Same for M1000)
    - sachdevap 7y ago
      Selectively removing clay court titles is not good statistics. Djokovic has 10 hard court victories, and Federer has 11. You don't call Djokovic a hard court specialist. 6 non-clay grand slam titles - Only 20 people across history, other than Nadal, have more than 6 grand slams on any surface. If you add 2 for RG averaging 2 a grand slam, only 7 people other than him in history have 8 GS titles. I think that is enough proof that he is much more than a clay court specialist.
    - likeabbas 7y ago
      You can't take out the clay, it's a proper surface in tennis. Nadal is the only one of the big 3 to have 2 of each slam surface type. We can point out useless stats all day but there's nothing you can say that can take away the fact that Nadal is in the running to be the GOAT and he has a chance to pass Federer's slam count
thom 7y ago
Would be interested to see more in-depth numbers backing this up. Anyone know the state of publicly accessible tennis (shot-by-shot) data?
- nyjah 7y ago
  The data is pretty difficult to obtain, but there's some great analysis on Nadal done by Craig O'Shannessy. Craig O' Shannessy is Djokovic's strategy coach and I think a pioneer to the game. He has plenty of posts about Nadal, here is just to get you started, some of the articles are members only, but there are plenty of great ones that aren't.. https://www.braingametennis.com/?s=nadal https://www.braingametennis.com/?s=nadal
  - necovek 7y ago
    While I've seen his posts (eg on atptour.com), he is usually noticing correlation that might not be causation: eg. take a look at his "second serve win rate" article — https://www.atptour.com/en/news/second-serves-nadal-federer-djokovic-infosys-june-2019 https://www.atptour.com/en/news/second-serves-nadal-federer-... It's obvious that it simply has good baseliners (players likelier to win a point once the ball is in play) and big 2nd servers at the top. But there's no data to support this, other than my gut feel of seeing big3 and Isner in there. But what about Kohlschreiber? While I am sure he does better work for his clients, he seems to have access to shot-by-shot data which I think is most valuable.
- necovek 7y ago
  I don't know of any tournament offering shot-by-shot data in their live scores (it's usually just the last hit in a point that's tracked by statistics, which I don't think says enough). If anyone knows of shot-by-shot data for just a single tournament, that'd be great to see and explore :)
- jsackmann 7y ago
  Shot-by-shot stats for almost 6,000 pro matches, including over 300 of Nadal's and 400 of Federer's: http://www.tennisabstract.com/charting/meta.html http://www.tennisabstract.com/charting/meta.html Raw data for a large subset of those matches: https://github.com/JeffSackmann/tennis_MatchChartingProject https://github.com/JeffSackmann/tennis_MatchChartingProject
Havoc 7y ago
Not sure how this is original enough to warrant a cross areas post to hn of all places let alone get up voted. Every soccer fan on every corner ever has a theory as to why his fav player is the best ever.
exogeny 7y ago
This basically describes Nadal as a pusher, which is a wild overstatement relative to his creativity and shotmaking.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
goatlover 7y ago
Djokovic has a case for best tennis player ever with his winning record head to head over Federer and Nadal. Federer has a losing record against both. He racked up a lot of his titles before Nadal and Djokovic became world champion players. Of course Nadal is best on clay.
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  Federer is significantly (5/6 years) older than Nadal and Djokovic, which makes it difficult to compare them in "all time" terms based on head-to-head results.
  - goatlover 7y ago
    Federer and Djokovic have played 47 times and 15 times in grand slams. That ties Djokovic-Nadal for most ever grand slam meetings. That should be enough head to head to make a comparison.
  - bookofjoe 7y ago
    Federer is 37; Nadal is 33; Djokovic is 32.
pg_bot 7y ago
Funnily enough I think the best player of all time is Novak Djokovic. He has 15 major titles to his name and currently holds a winning record vs both Nadal and Federer. All three have comparable winning percentages over their careers. I think people pencil in Federer as the best just because he is older than Nadal and Djokovic.
- davidivadavid 7y ago
  They do it because he's currently won more majors than they have. A case can be made for each of them that they all should hold the GOAT title, but it's hard to settle right now.
- Bhilai 7y ago
  I think age matters, if Djoker is playing at the same level at the age of 37 then he might be considered the best. The best player is the one who has won the most tournaments and that is Federer. Djoker has a really good chance of catching up though.
marknadal 7y ago
Why thank you, thank you! Yes, unbeatable, finally glad to hear HN admit it! Ah, tennis? Pssh. My son's name is Rocklin Clay Nadal.
osrec 7y ago
Strange article. The point around controlling only 50% - what the heck does that even mean?! As a tennis player, you know there are many variables at play in each rally. This sort of simplistic analysis tells us pretty much nothing. In my opinion, Nadal is great on clay because of his tenacity and ability to play the big points well. The slowness of the court helps him too as it prevents people hitting through him (I'll concede the article does mention that), and allows him to expose a less fit opponent (most are, when compared to Nadal) through extended rallies. He also has a very reliable 2 handed backhand that he can impart a great deal of spin on (unlike Djokovic or Murray, who hit it relatively flat). This gives him consistency. He is also able to handle high bouncing balls on clay on the backhand much better than others, especially those with a single handed backhand. For a baseliner, he has a very solid net game, and has a great sense of when to come in and finish the point. In my opinion, he has a better understanding of the "geometry" of the clay court, in that he knows when his opponent is at the point of no return. He then sneaks in to the net and finishes with a slice volley that drops dead on the clay. Finally, he plays left handed (despite being right handed). Being lefty is a big advantage in tennis in general, because 3 of the 4 game ending point scores will, by definition, be served to your forehand side (40-0, 40-30, A-40). Then there's the southpaw spin, which is harder to handle for most right handed players. Combine the slower court, the point score advantage and Nadal's natural returning abilities (second only to Djok), and you make it very very tricky to win games.
- addicted 7y ago
  Often ignored, but extremely relevant IMO, is Nadals tremendous ability to return basically anything he can reach is magnified at RG specifically (which is what we mean by clay, for the most part) by the really deep backcourts. RG has the most space between the baseline and the stands, and Nadal takes full advantage of it. I’ve always wondered why players haven’t tried taking advantage of that, with maybe an underhanded serve, and for the first time Kyrgios tried that this Wimbledon and actually won the point. It may not be as useful in RG because of the bounce, but the ability to draw Nadal closer to the Net during serve would be huge IMO.
  - osrec 7y ago
frereubu 7y ago
This - "In any tennis match, you can control roughly 50% of the game: when the ball is in your half of the court." - which is the main thrust of the post, seems very simplistic. There are lots and lots of things that you can do to control more than the time that the ball is in your court. For example, unusual spin, tactics during a rally, etc. I'd recommend reading "Roger Federer as Religious Experience" by David Foster Wallace - https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fed... - which, as well as being a superb piece of sports writing on its own terms, gives an excellent overview of the way that tactics play a huge role in tennis, rather than "the ball is only in your part of the court for 50% of the time, therefore that's what you can work with."
- srib 7y ago
  The linked piece is excellent. I had not read it before. Thank you sharing it!
  - frereubu 7y ago
    I just love this bit: 'And there’s that familiar little second of shocked silence from the New York crowd before it erupts, and John McEnroe with his color man’s headset on TV says (mostly to himself, it sounds like), "How do you hit a winner from that position?" And he’s right: given Agassi’s position and world-class quickness, Federer had to send that ball down a two-inch pipe of space in order to pass him, which he did, moving backwards, with no setup time and none of his weight behind the shot. It was impossible. It was like something out of "The Matrix." I don’t know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs. Anyway, that’s one example of a Federer Moment, and that was merely on TV — and the truth is that TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.'
    - brandnewlow 7y ago
      It's a tremendous piece of writing I've enjoyed many times over over the years but a troubling one. As best I can tell, this is the actual shot described in the excerpt you quoted. It's great but perhaps DFW embellished a bit in the retelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDwG5rJVtdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDwG5rJVtdc One writer reconsiders the piece: https://theoutline.com/post/7424/david-foster-wallace-roger-federer-moment https://theoutline.com/post/7424/david-foster-wallace-roger-...
vinayan3 7y ago
Besides being a little off topic for the site... Another key and massively important point with clay is that you can slide. Sliding properly where you stop as you hit the ball is a really tough skill to learn. Rafa has absolutely mastered this and it's a beauty to see. Sliding combined with the ball slowing and bouncing higher lets you get balls much further out. It makes it possible to defend more balls and not be out of court as much. On other surfaces like hardcourt, and grass it's really hard to slide. If you sprint out to a ball on those surfaces you will hit it on the run and end up a couple of steps beyond where the ball bounced. On clay with sliding you can really minimize these plays and maintain your position on court. Also, you can run so much harder on clay without fearing having to stop really hard which hurts on hard courts and significantly increases injury risk. Rafa's movement on clay just makes him unbeatable.
bsaul 7y ago
A bit off topic, but having followed tennis for the last 3 decades, i think the most striking thing on nadal and federer compared to previous generation is how much they improved technically throughout their career, even after their 30s ( after they both had won numerous grand slams). Nadal has improved on serve and volley, federer has improved on backend and serve. Watching young federer or young nadal vs today’s is extremely impressive. i think that it’s something we should all take lessons from, and is actually very encouraging for everyone in every field: Age limits are being pushed in every dimensions, and no matter where you are in your career, there’s always new things to learn and new limits to overcome.
- brookside 7y ago
  There is also quite a bit of incredulity that both Nadal and Federer are performing as they do without performance enhancing drugs. Nadal’s one-time doctor was nabbed, but his blood bags were ordered destroyed by Spanish court: http://en.espn.co.uk/tennis/sport/story/205055.html http://en.espn.co.uk/tennis/sport/story/205055.html
  - thinkpad20 7y ago
    I’m curious to what extent this is just innuendo and FUD, and how much there’s legitimate speculation (if there could be such a thing) as to Nadal and/or Federer doping. I’ve never heard even a whisper of doping suspicion with Roger, and this is the first I’ve heard of Rafa, but I don’t follow the sport super closely so maybe there are storylines I’ve missed. I know there have been other high profile tennis players to get caught doping, but my impression was that it was uncommon among today’s athletes. The way your comment is worded suggests that many in the know suspect either or both of doping — is this accurate?
    - brookside 7y ago
      I will fully admit to having no inside knowledge, or any concrete beliefs about the subject, really! I only have read a few blog posts which seemed reasonable enough. Such as: http://tennispurist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-curious-case-of-roger-federer.html http://tennispurist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-curious-case-of...
crusso 7y ago
"Players’ speed matters more on clay than other courts, and Nadal is the fastest on tour" That's an odd thing to say. I would think that Djokovic is the fastest of the major players.
- 3131s 7y ago
  Not in Nadal's prime, but maybe now. The primary reason is that Nadal simply generates more topspin, which has been known for a long time, and the spin of the ball has more impact on a clay court. Nadal's grip is "full western" while Federer and Djokovic both have more traditional forehand grips.
3131s 7y ago
It's all in the spin, and to a lesser extent Nadal's speed and mobility on clay. A high RPM top spin shot will kick forward and bounce high on clay to a greater extent than on a hard court, and it's extremely hard to deal with. I have hit with some pro tour players on clay, once even a former world #1 player, and it's near impossible to play offensively against their spin unless you want to take every ball on the rise. Also Nadal's flat serve is probably the weakest of the 3 greats, but the importance of a good flat serve is somewhat de-emphasized on clay.
stevespang 7y ago
I have been predicting your prediction 3 years ago . . .

58 points by anacleto 7y ago

I remember a Time magazine front cover article on Bjorn Borg in the late seventies (get off my lawn). One quote that stuck with me went something like this: "Borg's dominance is really exaggerated on clay courts. Borg v an average tour player on clay is like the Detroit Lions v a high school football team". Maybe there's something about clay that encourages individual dynasties. Edits: not any tour player, an average tour player, plus typo plus late seventies. Sorry

addicted 7y ago
Clay and grass to a lesser extent are more extreme surfaces, and they benefit certain types of players. Hard courts are far more neutral and allow for a wider range of styles to be competitive.
- billforsternz 7y ago
  Indeed. And as the original article mentioned, clay rewards a player who can "be a wall" and just keep getting the ball back and not beat himself. The article mentioned Nadal's heavy topspin, and I think Borg actually pioneered that. It's the only way to to hit powerful strokes with a margin of safety. The ball clears the net easily but then dips and doesn't go long.

iamthirsty 7y ago

Why are lots of blog posts written like this nowadays—like an email, where every sentence is a new paragraph?

ghaff 7y ago
General trend towards what's considered easier casual readability. Shorter sentences. Shorter paragraphs. More and shorter posts. Smaller words. At one online publication I write for sometimes, the tool I use to enter my articles is always whining at me to drop the reading level down. I don't usually go as far as single sentence paragraphs but I've generally learned to shift most of what I write towards easier consumption.
kartan 7y ago
> where every sentence is a new paragraph? Probably because of blog software. Word Press does this by default. https://wordpress.org/support/article/wordpress-editor/ https://wordpress.org/support/article/wordpress-editor/
- paulcole 7y ago
  Wordpress most definitely does not do this by default. Typing a period, a space, and then a capital letter to begin the next Steven ever does not start a new paragraph. You can even see in the screenshots on the link you provided that new sentences do not become new paragraphs.
kd5bjo 7y ago
If 80% of your readers are only going to pay attention to the pull quotes and tl;dr’s, why go to the trouble of writing anything else?

toyg 7y ago

This is hardly original, Nadal's game has been well-analysed for ages now. However, this is also why a lot of (most?) people prefer Federer to him: because Roger's game is more original and creative. It's a bit like Toyota vs Tesla: one will always sell more cars and make more money because it executes better, but that's not always the point.

likeabbas 7y ago
Highly disagree with your analysis of why most people prefer Federer to him. Most people prefer Federer because Fed was successful first, then Nadal. So, people were used to seeing Federer dominate and then Nadal came in. Nadal is far from a clay court specialist. 2x Wimbledon champ, 5x finalist. 3 US open titles, 1 Aussie open title and 4x finalist. Your metaphor of car manufacturers really doesn’t do Nadal justice. It’s more like incumbents always have the advantage, and the challenger always has a harder fight.
- greatpatton 7y ago
  Yes but if you remove the French open victories from Nadal total (down to 6) total both Djokovic (down to 14) and Federer (down to 19) have more than twice (or even 3x times) the number of grand slam Victories. (Same for M1000)
  - sachdevap 7y ago
    Selectively removing clay court titles is not good statistics. Djokovic has 10 hard court victories, and Federer has 11. You don't call Djokovic a hard court specialist. 6 non-clay grand slam titles - Only 20 people across history, other than Nadal, have more than 6 grand slams on any surface. If you add 2 for RG averaging 2 a grand slam, only 7 people other than him in history have 8 GS titles. I think that is enough proof that he is much more than a clay court specialist.
  - likeabbas 7y ago
    You can't take out the clay, it's a proper surface in tennis. Nadal is the only one of the big 3 to have 2 of each slam surface type. We can point out useless stats all day but there's nothing you can say that can take away the fact that Nadal is in the running to be the GOAT and he has a chance to pass Federer's slam count

thom 7y ago

Would be interested to see more in-depth numbers backing this up. Anyone know the state of publicly accessible tennis (shot-by-shot) data?

nyjah 7y ago
The data is pretty difficult to obtain, but there's some great analysis on Nadal done by Craig O'Shannessy. Craig O' Shannessy is Djokovic's strategy coach and I think a pioneer to the game. He has plenty of posts about Nadal, here is just to get you started, some of the articles are members only, but there are plenty of great ones that aren't.. https://www.braingametennis.com/?s=nadal https://www.braingametennis.com/?s=nadal
- necovek 7y ago
  While I've seen his posts (eg on atptour.com), he is usually noticing correlation that might not be causation: eg. take a look at his "second serve win rate" article — https://www.atptour.com/en/news/second-serves-nadal-federer-djokovic-infosys-june-2019 https://www.atptour.com/en/news/second-serves-nadal-federer-... It's obvious that it simply has good baseliners (players likelier to win a point once the ball is in play) and big 2nd servers at the top. But there's no data to support this, other than my gut feel of seeing big3 and Isner in there. But what about Kohlschreiber? While I am sure he does better work for his clients, he seems to have access to shot-by-shot data which I think is most valuable.
necovek 7y ago
I don't know of any tournament offering shot-by-shot data in their live scores (it's usually just the last hit in a point that's tracked by statistics, which I don't think says enough). If anyone knows of shot-by-shot data for just a single tournament, that'd be great to see and explore :)
jsackmann 7y ago
Shot-by-shot stats for almost 6,000 pro matches, including over 300 of Nadal's and 400 of Federer's: http://www.tennisabstract.com/charting/meta.html http://www.tennisabstract.com/charting/meta.html Raw data for a large subset of those matches: https://github.com/JeffSackmann/tennis_MatchChartingProject https://github.com/JeffSackmann/tennis_MatchChartingProject

Havoc 7y ago

Not sure how this is original enough to warrant a cross areas post to hn of all places let alone get up voted. Every soccer fan on every corner ever has a theory as to why his fav player is the best ever.

exogeny 7y ago

This basically describes Nadal as a pusher, which is a wild overstatement relative to his creativity and shotmaking.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

goatlover 7y ago

Djokovic has a case for best tennis player ever with his winning record head to head over Federer and Nadal. Federer has a losing record against both. He racked up a lot of his titles before Nadal and Djokovic became world champion players. Of course Nadal is best on clay.

i_am_proteus 7y ago
Federer is significantly (5/6 years) older than Nadal and Djokovic, which makes it difficult to compare them in "all time" terms based on head-to-head results.
- goatlover 7y ago
  Federer and Djokovic have played 47 times and 15 times in grand slams. That ties Djokovic-Nadal for most ever grand slam meetings. That should be enough head to head to make a comparison.
- bookofjoe 7y ago
  Federer is 37; Nadal is 33; Djokovic is 32.

pg_bot 7y ago

Funnily enough I think the best player of all time is Novak Djokovic. He has 15 major titles to his name and currently holds a winning record vs both Nadal and Federer. All three have comparable winning percentages over their careers. I think people pencil in Federer as the best just because he is older than Nadal and Djokovic.

davidivadavid 7y ago
They do it because he's currently won more majors than they have. A case can be made for each of them that they all should hold the GOAT title, but it's hard to settle right now.
Bhilai 7y ago
I think age matters, if Djoker is playing at the same level at the age of 37 then he might be considered the best. The best player is the one who has won the most tournaments and that is Federer. Djoker has a really good chance of catching up though.

marknadal 7y ago

Why thank you, thank you! Yes, unbeatable, finally glad to hear HN admit it! Ah, tennis? Pssh. My son's name is Rocklin Clay Nadal.

osrec 7y ago

Strange article. The point around controlling only 50% - what the heck does that even mean?! As a tennis player, you know there are many variables at play in each rally. This sort of simplistic analysis tells us pretty much nothing. In my opinion, Nadal is great on clay because of his tenacity and ability to play the big points well. The slowness of the court helps him too as it prevents people hitting through him (I'll concede the article does mention that), and allows him to expose a less fit opponent (most are, when compared to Nadal) through extended rallies. He also has a very reliable 2 handed backhand that he can impart a great deal of spin on (unlike Djokovic or Murray, who hit it relatively flat). This gives him consistency. He is also able to handle high bouncing balls on clay on the backhand much better than others, especially those with a single handed backhand. For a baseliner, he has a very solid net game, and has a great sense of when to come in and finish the point. In my opinion, he has a better understanding of the "geometry" of the clay court, in that he knows when his opponent is at the point of no return. He then sneaks in to the net and finishes with a slice volley that drops dead on the clay. Finally, he plays left handed (despite being right handed). Being lefty is a big advantage in tennis in general, because 3 of the 4 game ending point scores will, by definition, be served to your forehand side (40-0, 40-30, A-40). Then there's the southpaw spin, which is harder to handle for most right handed players. Combine the slower court, the point score advantage and Nadal's natural returning abilities (second only to Djok), and you make it very very tricky to win games.

addicted 7y ago
Often ignored, but extremely relevant IMO, is Nadals tremendous ability to return basically anything he can reach is magnified at RG specifically (which is what we mean by clay, for the most part) by the really deep backcourts. RG has the most space between the baseline and the stands, and Nadal takes full advantage of it. I’ve always wondered why players haven’t tried taking advantage of that, with maybe an underhanded serve, and for the first time Kyrgios tried that this Wimbledon and actually won the point. It may not be as useful in RG because of the bounce, but the ability to draw Nadal closer to the Net during serve would be huge IMO.
- osrec 7y ago

frereubu 7y ago

This - "In any tennis match, you can control roughly 50% of the game: when the ball is in your half of the court." - which is the main thrust of the post, seems very simplistic. There are lots and lots of things that you can do to control more than the time that the ball is in your court. For example, unusual spin, tactics during a rally, etc. I'd recommend reading "Roger Federer as Religious Experience" by David Foster Wallace - https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fed... - which, as well as being a superb piece of sports writing on its own terms, gives an excellent overview of the way that tactics play a huge role in tennis, rather than "the ball is only in your part of the court for 50% of the time, therefore that's what you can work with."

srib 7y ago
The linked piece is excellent. I had not read it before. Thank you sharing it!
- frereubu 7y ago
  I just love this bit: 'And there’s that familiar little second of shocked silence from the New York crowd before it erupts, and John McEnroe with his color man’s headset on TV says (mostly to himself, it sounds like), "How do you hit a winner from that position?" And he’s right: given Agassi’s position and world-class quickness, Federer had to send that ball down a two-inch pipe of space in order to pass him, which he did, moving backwards, with no setup time and none of his weight behind the shot. It was impossible. It was like something out of "The Matrix." I don’t know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs. Anyway, that’s one example of a Federer Moment, and that was merely on TV — and the truth is that TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.'
  - brandnewlow 7y ago
    It's a tremendous piece of writing I've enjoyed many times over over the years but a troubling one. As best I can tell, this is the actual shot described in the excerpt you quoted. It's great but perhaps DFW embellished a bit in the retelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDwG5rJVtdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDwG5rJVtdc One writer reconsiders the piece: https://theoutline.com/post/7424/david-foster-wallace-roger-federer-moment https://theoutline.com/post/7424/david-foster-wallace-roger-...

vinayan3 7y ago

Besides being a little off topic for the site... Another key and massively important point with clay is that you can slide. Sliding properly where you stop as you hit the ball is a really tough skill to learn. Rafa has absolutely mastered this and it's a beauty to see. Sliding combined with the ball slowing and bouncing higher lets you get balls much further out. It makes it possible to defend more balls and not be out of court as much. On other surfaces like hardcourt, and grass it's really hard to slide. If you sprint out to a ball on those surfaces you will hit it on the run and end up a couple of steps beyond where the ball bounced. On clay with sliding you can really minimize these plays and maintain your position on court. Also, you can run so much harder on clay without fearing having to stop really hard which hurts on hard courts and significantly increases injury risk. Rafa's movement on clay just makes him unbeatable.

bsaul 7y ago

A bit off topic, but having followed tennis for the last 3 decades, i think the most striking thing on nadal and federer compared to previous generation is how much they improved technically throughout their career, even after their 30s ( after they both had won numerous grand slams). Nadal has improved on serve and volley, federer has improved on backend and serve. Watching young federer or young nadal vs today’s is extremely impressive. i think that it’s something we should all take lessons from, and is actually very encouraging for everyone in every field: Age limits are being pushed in every dimensions, and no matter where you are in your career, there’s always new things to learn and new limits to overcome.

brookside 7y ago
There is also quite a bit of incredulity that both Nadal and Federer are performing as they do without performance enhancing drugs. Nadal’s one-time doctor was nabbed, but his blood bags were ordered destroyed by Spanish court: http://en.espn.co.uk/tennis/sport/story/205055.html http://en.espn.co.uk/tennis/sport/story/205055.html
- thinkpad20 7y ago
  I’m curious to what extent this is just innuendo and FUD, and how much there’s legitimate speculation (if there could be such a thing) as to Nadal and/or Federer doping. I’ve never heard even a whisper of doping suspicion with Roger, and this is the first I’ve heard of Rafa, but I don’t follow the sport super closely so maybe there are storylines I’ve missed. I know there have been other high profile tennis players to get caught doping, but my impression was that it was uncommon among today’s athletes. The way your comment is worded suggests that many in the know suspect either or both of doping — is this accurate?
  - brookside 7y ago
    I will fully admit to having no inside knowledge, or any concrete beliefs about the subject, really! I only have read a few blog posts which seemed reasonable enough. Such as: http://tennispurist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-curious-case-of-roger-federer.html http://tennispurist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-curious-case-of...

crusso 7y ago

"Players’ speed matters more on clay than other courts, and Nadal is the fastest on tour" That's an odd thing to say. I would think that Djokovic is the fastest of the major players.

3131s 7y ago
Not in Nadal's prime, but maybe now. The primary reason is that Nadal simply generates more topspin, which has been known for a long time, and the spin of the ball has more impact on a clay court. Nadal's grip is "full western" while Federer and Djokovic both have more traditional forehand grips.

3131s 7y ago

It's all in the spin, and to a lesser extent Nadal's speed and mobility on clay. A high RPM top spin shot will kick forward and bounce high on clay to a greater extent than on a hard court, and it's extremely hard to deal with. I have hit with some pro tour players on clay, once even a former world #1 player, and it's near impossible to play offensively against their spin unless you want to take every ball on the rise. Also Nadal's flat serve is probably the weakest of the 3 greats, but the importance of a good flat serve is somewhat de-emphasized on clay.

stevespang 7y ago

I have been predicting your prediction 3 years ago . . .