{"id":3296,"date":"2019-01-26T14:27:35","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T14:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=3296"},"modified":"2019-01-26T14:27:35","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T14:27:35","slug":"the-impact-of-rafael-nadals-new-serve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/26\/the-impact-of-rafael-nadals-new-serve\/","title":{"rendered":"The Impact of Rafael Nadal’s New Serve"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Italian translation at settesei.it<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of years ago, the story of the Australian Open was a certain veteran Swiss player’s new backhand<\/a>. Roger Federer<\/a> won the tournament, raced back up the rankings, and eventually reclaimed the No. 1 spot. This season has kicked off with another superstar, Rafael Nadal<\/a>, attempting to shore up his own relative weakness by streamlining his serve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The early results are extremely positive. Through the semi-final, Nadal’s first serves in Melbourne have averaged<\/a> 115 mph, compared to 110 mph at the US Open last fall. He hasn’t been broken in five straight matches, dating back to the second round, and has faced only 13 break points in his last 15 sets. True, he hasn’t faced a truly tough test, as the draw has handed him only two seeds, neither in the top ten. But his lopsided results thus far could equally be ascribed to his own dominance. After all, he demolished Stefanos Tsitsipas<\/a> only a few days after the Greek prospect ousted Federer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Serve speed numbers are encouraging and lopsided wins are great for the body, but our focus should always be on points, and how many of them he’s winning. By that measure, Rafa’s retooled serve has excelled, helping the Spaniard post some of the best-ever serving numbers of his grand slam career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In six matches, Nadal has won 80.9% of his first-serve points. (Fellow finalist Novak Djokovic<\/a> has won 77.5% of his. Both numbers are outstanding, as the hard-court tour average is below 75%, a figure that includes the contributions of much more dominant servers.) At hard and grass court grand slams, Rafa has done better only twice: 83.6% at the 2010 US Open and 81.3% and Wimbledon in 2008. Here are his top-ten first-serve performances through the semi-finals at hard court majors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tournament            1st W%  2nd W%            \n2010 US Open           83.6%   66.9%            \n2008 Wimbledon         81.3%   64.3%            \n2019 Australian Open   80.9%   58.0%            \n2013 US Open           79.5%   64.7%            \n2017 Wimbledon         79.4%   58.6%            \n2011 Wimbledon         79.4%   59.4%            \n2010 Wimbledon         79.3%   61.6%            \n2006 Wimbledon         77.9%   62.1%            \n2012 Wimbledon         77.3%   61.5%            \n2012 Australian Open   76.8%   56.7%<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
You might notice a pattern at the top of this list: Those are slams that he went on to win. The 2010 US Open was his first hard court major title, sealed with a four-set win over Djokovic, his most dominant non-clay victory over his long-time rival. 2008 Wimbledon was his first title there, in the memorable final against Federer. The 2013 US Open was another relatively tidy triumph over Djokovic. All the Wimbledons that clutter the bottom half of this list are inflated a bit by the surface, and it is revealing that Rafa’s next-best performance at the Australian Open sits so far down the list, with his 76.5% first-serve mark in 2012. That fortnight didn’t end in his favor, but it took nearly six hours for Djokovic to beat him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is all encouraging and, at the very least, it will make for an interesting aspect of tomorrow’s final, between the newly dangerous serving of Nadal and the ever-brilliant return game of Djokovic. But with only six matches on record, it’s tough to push the analysis much further. Rafa was dominant against Tsitsipas, but barely better than he was against the Greek when they met in Canada last summer. In Australia, he won 80.3% of service points, including 85% of his firsts; in their previous meeting, he won 78.9% of service points and 93.8% of his firsts. A more positive comparison is between his fourth-round win over Tomas Berdych<\/a> (75.3% service points won, 80.4% firsts) and his previous hard court meetings with the Czech (66.6%, 72.7%). On the other hand, they hadn’t played since 2015 and Berdych is returning from injury, so we can’t put too much weight on the comparison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nadal’s more pessimistic fans will be keeping an eye on his second serve in Sunday’s final, as that delivery has not demonstrated the same jump in effectiveness. In the six Melbourne matches, Rafa has won 58.0% of second-serve points, just barely above his career average of 57.3% at hard court majors. That relative weakness was exploited by Alex De Minaur<\/a>, the best returner of his Aussie Open opponents, who held Nadal to a measly 36.4% of second serve points won. Djokovic is even better, neutralizing<\/a> bigger second-serve weapons than Rafa’s, so it remains a concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Nadal wins the title, his new serve will rightfully take much of the credit. Not only has it improved his effectiveness on that side of the ball, it has helped keep his matches short and his body ready for the challenges of hard court tennis. Years ago, I bucked the conventional wisdom and argued<\/a> that Rafa could reach 17 slams. Since then, Federer has shifted the goalposts, but a bigger-serving Nadal makes 20 or 21 look more realistic than ever before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Italian translation at settesei.it A couple of years ago, the story of the Australian Open was a certain veteran Swiss player’s new backhand. Roger Federer won the tournament, raced back up the rankings, and eventually reclaimed the No. 1 spot. This season has kicked off with another superstar, Rafael Nadal, attempting to shore up his … Continue reading The Impact of Rafael Nadal’s New Serve<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australian-open","category-serve-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}