Category: Match charting

Nadal d. Gasquet: Recap and Detailed Stats

Not often do we come away from a straight-set victory with newfound respect for the loser, but that’s the appropriate reaction today.

As I discussed this morning, Richard Gasquet has never accomplished much of anything against Rafael Nadal. The 10-0 head-to-head, if anything, disguises how lopsided it has been.

Today, for two sets, the Frenchman came as close to going toe-to-toe with Nadal as he probably ever will. From the start, he was playing a much more varied game than we are accustomed to from him, serving aggressively, rushing the net at any provocation, and even standing inside the stadium to return serve.

Despite getting broken three times, Gasquet never really went away. After he lost his first service game, it looked like another Nadal-administred drubbing in the works, but Richard held serve for the remainder of the set, finishing at 6-4.

In the second, he once again lost the first game of the set on serve, but went one better. He broke Nadal back, the first service game Nadal has lost in New York. Gasquet took advantage of Rafa’s carelessness to stay on serve until they reached a tiebreak.

Then came the disappointment of the match. Gasquet opened the breaker with a double fault, and serving at 1-6, he doubled once more. That was the only sign of the passive, unthreatening Richard we got all day.

The third set was more lopsided, though Gasquet kept playing aggressive tennis. Nadal was just too good. (Gasquet didn’t help, double faulting twice from 30-30 in the final game, but in the end, it was just the difference between 6-2 and 6-3.)

For Gasquet to beat Rafa, he would have to play the match of a lifetime. He didn’t come close to doing that today, but he did show up with a better set of tactics than he generally brings to bear. While a more varied attack from the Frenchman won’t earn him a spot in the top five, it will ensure he remains in the top ten.

Here are the complete point-by-point stats for the match, and in case you missed it earlier, here’s my recap of the Djokovic-Wawrinka semifinal.

Wawrinka d. Murray: Recap and Detailed Stats

The narrative felt familiar.  A flashy player from the fringes of the top ten takes on an established top-five guy, a great defender who would be sure to outlast his opponent in the end.

Yesterday, it was Gasquet and Ferrer.  Today, Stanislas Wawrinka and Andy Murray.  Even after Wawrinka took the first set, the same talking points reappeared: Surely Wawrinka would press, or tire, or Murray would wake up and play better tennis.  Fortunately for Stan, he didn’t have to fight off as spirited a comeback as Gasquet did; he simply kept employing the same successful strategies while Murray, passive and error-ridden, let him run away with the match.

While Murray’s impotence will be the story of this match–he hit only 15 winners in the entire match, and that includes six aces–much must be said about Wawrinka’s game plan.

The Swiss is known for his backhand, but unlike Gasquet, he doesn’t unduly favor it.  Roughly 40% of his groundstrokes are backhands (including slices), meaning he is willing to move around it and attack with the forehand.  The Wawrinka forehand is a weapon that is known to break down, but when it’s working, it can be just as deadly as the backhand.  It didn’t falter today: Stan earned 27 winners and induced five additional forced errors with shots from that side.

But the forehand was only a complementary part of the attack.  What continued to surprise throughout the match was Wawrinka’s willingness–sometimes over-eagerness–to come to net.  His transition game is a little awkward, and many of his errors came from failed approach shots, but by continually putting more pressure on Murray, he closed out points when Andy would’ve been content to let them go on for ten more shots.

Another underrated part of Wawrinka’s game is the serve.  While Stan will never post eye-popping ace numbers, it’s an effective shot that sets up the rest of his game well.  Today, he only tallied four aces and one unreturnable, but of 76 total serve points, Wawrinka won 29 of them with or before his second shot.  That isn’t as foolproof as an Isner-like ace tally, but the end result is the same.

And sure enough, it prevented Murray from even sniffing opportunity.  Murray didn’t earn a single break point in the match, the first time he has failed to generate one since his loss to Roger Federer in the 2010 World Tour Finals.

Wawrinka, on the other hand, pushed Murray to 30-30 in almost every one of his service games, and after suffering through a marathon game at the end of the first set, in which he needed seven opportunities to seal the break and the set, he didn’t waste nearly so much time again.  The Swiss converted three of five break point opportunities after that first set.

It was a bad day for Murray, that’s for sure.  It represented a step back to before his days as an Olympic and Grand Slam champion, and it may be a tough one to bounce back from.  Wawrinka, on the other hand, forces us to consider him as one of the “next four,” perhaps the Swiss #1 sooner rather than later.  He won’t always beat Murray with today’s game plan, but he’ll do more damage against higher-ranked players.

In Saturday’s semifinal against Djokovic? That’ll be a big ask, even playing the way he did today.  Novak has reeled off eleven victories in a row in their head-to-head, though their last match was the marathon fourth-rounder in Australia, when Stan pushed him to 12-10 in the fifth set.  The semi won’t have the star power it would’ve with Murray, but we can expect some great tennis.

Here are my detailed serve, return, and shot-type stats for today’s match.

Gasquet d. Ferrer: Recap and Detailed Stats

The knock on Richard Gasquet has long been his inability to play the big matches, to overcome higher-ranked opponents, even when he has the weapons to defeat them.  David Ferrer is the sort of guy who eats such players for lunch.  One might figure the Frenchman would win a set, but not that he would find his way into the semifinals of a Grand Slam.

For two sets today, Gasquet played as well as I’ve ever seen him play. He combined patience with his devastating down-the-line backhand, waiting eight, ten, or more shots before the opportunities arose to unleash the monster.

What’s remarkable is that most conventional stats don’t bear this out. He barely got half of his first serves in. He hit a mere seven winners in the first set, against a dozen unforced errors. But he coaxed plenty of mistakes out of an opponent who doesn’t often make many.

Gasquet was able to race to his two-set lead in large part because Ferrer wasn’t playing his best tennis. The tactics looked familiar, but Ferru wasn’t quite as aggressive as usual, letting Gasquet earn those opportunities to strike. Ferrer hit only three winners in the entire second set.

The next two sets fulfilled everyone’s expectations. Despite his five-set triumph over Milos Raonic, Gasquet’s history suggests he would mentally fade, and perhaps physically give out long before Ferrer would. As the Spaniard piled on the breaks, those forecasts appeared to come true.

Ferrer’s success against Gasquet’s serve tells the story. While failing to win more than 30% of return points in the first two sets, suddenly he won half of Gasquet’s service points. With Gasquet playing more listlessly, settling in further back in the court, a couple of breaks were plenty.

It would have been easy for the Frenchman to go away in the fifth set; he’s done it before. Ferrer’s reputation precedes him, and certainly, he showed no signs of physically weakening as the match went into its fifth hour.

But Gasquet dug out of a 15-30 hole to win his opening service game; he fought past two deuces and a break point to win his second. With both players settling in for a grind, the turning point came on Gasquet’s only break point of the deciding set, when Ferrer double-faulted to give his opponent a 5-2 advantage.

Thanks to a couple of errors from Ferrer in the final game and a big serve on match point, the Spaniard never had another opportunity. Gasquet moves to the semifinals and a probable date with Rafael Nadal.

It was only Gasquet’s second win against Ferrer in nine meetings, and only his seventh career win in a five-setter. His only previous five-set win against a higher-ranked opponent was in his only prior Grand Slam quarterfinal, in 2007 at Wimbledon against Andy Roddick.

And now, after winning his second Grand Slam fourth-round match in 17 tries, he moves to a perfect 2-0 in quarterfinals.

Here are my complete serve, return, and rally length stats for the match.

Murray d. Istomin: Recap and Detailed Stats

Tonight Andy Murray defeated Denis Istomin in four sets for a place in the quarterfinals against Stanislas Wawrinka. I logged every point, and have lots of stats for you to check out.

In particular, check out the new “key points” and “rally length” tables.

Murray started out sluggishly and never appeared to play at 100%. But what he brought was good enough, especially in the second set, when Istomin went down an early break and immediately started looking to the third set.

Istomin has a big game, with the ability to dictate play from the baseline. Murray spent a lot of time in classic Andy defense mode, and often it worked, as perhaps Istomin’s greatest weakness is his predilection for low-percentage shots. His 58 unforced errors (not counting double faults) don’t even convey the whole story, as so many of those should have been simple rallying shots.  It may not be easy to construct a point against a defender like Murray, but Istomin’s tactics didn’t do him much credit.

While Murray came through tonight, it marks another sign of weakness for defending champ. Playing like he did tonight won’t be enough to beat Wawrinka, let alone Novak Djokovic in the semifinals. His serve never really got going, and once he learned he could trust Istomin to lose points without too much help, he waited out his opponent. It worked, but it took over three hours. Andy in champion mode should have won this one in less than two.

Here are the complete chart-based stats.

Detailed Match Stats: Serena, Sloane, Halep, Vika, Berdych

I’ve charted several matches over the last two days, and there’s some new stuff to show you.

Follow these links, and you’ll see a new format for my detailed, chart-based match stats.  The same serve and return breakdowns you’ve seen earlier this week, but a little easier to navigate.

Best of all, there’s a new set of data: rally outcomes.  For each of these matches, you can see how each player performed in rallies of 1-3 shots, 4-6 shots, 7-9 shots, and 10+ shots, along with each of those categories on each player’s serve.

To get to the rally outcomes table, click on the link for the match you want to investigate, and then click the link for “Point outcomes by rally length.”

Enjoy!

Sunday: R16: Serena Williams vs Sloane Stephens: click here

Sunday: R32: Tomas Berdych vs Julien Benneteau: click here

Saturday: R32: Victoria Azarenka vs Alize Cornet: click here

Saturday: R32: Simona Halep vs Maria Kirilenko: click here

There will be more in the next few days, along with additional analysis, I hope as soon as tomorrow.

Anderson vs Baghdatis: In Extreme Detail

This one was fun.  When choosing to chart this match, I figured it was good for at least four sets, and that Kevin Anderson was likely to come out on top.  The typical Marcos Baghdatis performance this year has consisted of occasional glimpses of brilliance, mired in clunky decision-making and a pile of unforced errors.

Tonight we were treated to vintage Baghdatis, the version that packs stadiums with fans hoping to see some his trademark electric shotmaking.  Anderson may not have brought his best game, but he hit a fair number of first serves that would have gone for cheap points against most players, while Baghdatis not only got them back, he quickly turned the point to his advantage.

In 12 service games, Anderson was broken six times, most on hard courts since a 2010 match against Sam Querrey.  (Really, Sam Querrey.)  And it was Baghdatis’s most dominant performance in a Slam match since the 2006 Australian, when he beat Denis Gremelmayr, 6-2 6-1 6-2.  I seem to recall the rest of that tournament going pretty well for Marcos, too.

If the same Baghdatis shows up for Sunday’s match against Stanislas Wawrinka, that third-rounder could be a highlight of the weekend.

In the meantime, enjoy all serve and return breakdowns for both players.

Almost every one of those tables illustrates some aspect of Baghdatis’s dominance tonight.

  • Anderson only won 43% of his serve points by his second shot.  Without a larger dataset to compare to, it’s tough to know just how bad that is, but look at it another way: More than half of the time, Anderson’s serve resulted in a prolonged rally.  That can’t be good.
  • It’s interesting to see that both players hit several aces in both directions, both wide and down the T.  This is in contrast to Federer‘s performance the other night, in which almost all of his aces were down the T.
  • Of Baghdatis’s 57 serve points, 37 were returnable.  Anderson won only nine of those points. Nine.  It’s almost pointless to break that down any further, because no subset of those return points is going to look good.
  • By contrast, Baghdatis won 30 of the 45 points in which Anderson hit a returnable serve.  He only hit five unforced errors on serve returns, and got 35 of those 45 returns past the service line.

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In case you’re new to my serve and return breakdowns, here are the previous ones:

Hantuchova vs Duval: In Extreme Detail

Tonight I logged every point of the second-round match between Daniela Hantuchova and Vicky Duval.  It didn’t end up being very close, but Duval showed off some of the baseline skills that got her into the second round, while Hantuchova displayed the powerful serving and speed that kept her in the top 30 for so long.

Here is the complete breakdown. Tonight, we have both serves and returns.

Over the next few days, I’m hoping to come up with similar breakdowns for rally endings, shot types, and just about all the other numbers you can imagine crunching when you’ve charted every shot of a tennis match.  Stay tuned.  Maybe I’ll even try to make the presentation a little easier on the eyes.  (But don’t bet on it.)

Baker vs Hewitt Return Profile: In Extreme Detail

Here’s the trouble with jotting down the details of every single shot in a tennis match: When you’re done, you have details about every single shot in the tennis match.

If you saw my post yesterday presenting serve profiles for Federer and Zemlja, you already have some idea of what I’m talking about.  When you can chop up each player’s performance a thousand different ways, it seems like a waste to ignore any possibility.

Here we go again.

I charted tonight’s match between Brian Baker and Lleyton Hewitt, two of the more electric baseliners in today’s game.  Hewitt doesn’t have much of a serve, and while Baker can crush his share of aces, he’s rarely consistent enough to shut down his opponent’s return game.

Here’s all the data I could think to generate regarding their return games tonight.

(Seriously, click the link.  I’m only writing this post as an excuse to show off what’s on the other side of that link.)

Here are some tidbits of interest I’ve noted from the data:

  • Hewitt is remarkably consistent, winning about the same number of return points in the deuce and ad courts, and against all types of serves except for those down the T.  (As we saw yesterday, Federer got almost all of his aces down the T, and that is probably true for most players.  Thus, returners will look weak in that category.)
  • Baker didn’t take much advantage of shallow returns.  Hewitt won more than half of the points in which he failed to get the return past Baker’s service line.
  • While Baker did a better job of hitting deep returns (80% past the service line), he wasn’t nearly as successful (winning only 29% of points) when his returns fell in the service box.  That’s probably a credit to Hewitt more than a knock on Baker.
  • Neither player sliced or chipped returns unless they absolutely had to.  Baker sliced less than 10% of his returns, and Hewitt barely 5% of his.
  • Baker loves his down-the-line backhand.  His five down-the-line return winners accounted for half of his total return winners, and they also represent half of his down-the-line returns.

Go look at the tables, let your eyes adjust for a minute, and then tell me if you find anything else interesting.