{"id":585,"date":"2011-12-05T14:03:10","date_gmt":"2011-12-05T19:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=585"},"modified":"2011-12-05T14:03:10","modified_gmt":"2011-12-05T19:03:10","slug":"point-by-point-profile-roger-federer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/05\/point-by-point-profile-roger-federer\/","title":{"rendered":"Point-by-Point Profile: Roger Federer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continuing with our point-by-point player profiles<\/a>, let’s look at Roger Federer. Despite a down year, his service game remains one to be envied and emulated. His more conservative return game also provides a contrast to the styles of Djokovic and Nadal.<\/p>\n

Using all of his grand slam matches from 2011, we can begin to analyze his tendencies on serve and return.<\/p>\n

The first table shows the frequency of different outcomes in the deuce<\/a> court, in the ad court, and on break point, relative to Federer’s average. For instance, the 1.014 in the upper left corner means that Fed wins 1.4% more points than average in the deuce court.<\/p>\n

OUTCOME       Deuce     Ad  Break  \nPoint%        1.014  0.984  0.875  \n                                   \nAces          1.107  0.883  0.738  \nSvc Wnr       1.052  0.943  0.861  \nDbl Faults    1.019  0.979  0.453  \n1st Sv In     1.030  0.967  0.872  \n                                   \nServer Wnr    0.989  1.012  0.845  \nServer UE     0.941  1.065  1.405  \n                                   \nReturn Wnr    1.109  0.880  0.877  \nReturner Wnr  0.955  1.049  1.341  \nReturner UE   0.974  1.028  1.020  \n                                   \nRally Len     0.957  1.047  1.278  <\/pre>\n
For a big-serving right-hander, we might expect to see more success in the deuce court.  Yet the difference isn’t that large, except in aces and service winners.  Federer counterbalances his lack of aces in the ad court by preventing return winners.<\/p>\n
Some of his break point tendencies are striking.  As with most players, he wins fewer break points than average points (because opponents who push him to break point are better).  He serves much more conservatively, particularly the second serve, which he almost never misses when down break point.<\/p>\n
Next, this is how he performs on a point-by-point<\/a> basis.  Win% shows what percentage of points he wins at that score; Exp is how many he would be expected to win (given how he performs in each match), and Rate is the difference between the two.  A rate above 1 means he plays better on those points; below 1 is worse.<\/p>\n
SCORE   Pts   Win%    Exp  Rate  \ng0-0    398  74.1%  71.0%  1.04  \ng0-15   102  64.7%  68.0%  0.95  \ng0-30    36  63.9%  66.9%  0.95  \ng0-40    13  61.5%  66.6%  0.92  \n                                 \ng15-0   291  74.6%  72.1%  1.03  \ng15-15  140  69.3%  70.1%  0.99  \ng15-30   66  68.2%  68.0%  1.00  \ng15-40   29  75.9%  67.3%  1.13  \n                                 \ng30-0   217  72.8%  72.3%  1.01  \ng30-15  156  66.0%  70.9%  0.93  \ng30-30   98  70.4%  68.7%  1.02  \ng30-40   51  52.9%  68.1%  0.78  \n                                 \ng40-0   158  73.4%  72.7%  1.01  \ng40-15  145  66.2%  71.4%  0.93  \ng40-30  118  76.3%  69.7%  1.09  \ng40-40   95  72.6%  68.6%  1.06  \n                                 \ng40-AD   26  53.8%  65.6%  0.82  \ngAD-40   69  62.3%  69.8%  0.89  <\/pre>\n
You don’t have to watch Federer much to realize he likes his service games quick–and often, he has no problem putting another one on the board with only four or five serves.  But when he fails to do that, his results aren’t very good.<\/p>\n
His performance at both 40-AD and AD-40 might be a clue as to why he didn’t win a grand slam this year; in both cases, he should be winning between 65 and 70% of points, but he failed to do so by a large margin.  (Though at 40-AD, the sample size is small enough to be discarded altogether.)  The success rate at 30-40 is even worse.  At least when he reached deuce, he performed better than average.<\/p>\n
Serving Against Federer<\/b><\/p>\n
We can go through the same exercises for Fed’s return points.  The next two tables are trickier to read.  Look at them as Serving against Federer<\/i>.  Thus, the number in the upper-left corner means that when serving against Roger, players win 1.9% more points than average in the deuce court; he is a better returner in the ad court.<\/p>\n
(I’ve excluded return points against lefty servers.  Since lefties and righties have such different serving tendencies, limiting the sample to righty servers gives us clearer results, even as the sample shrinks a bit.)<\/p>\n
OUTCOME       Deuce     Ad  Break  \nPoint%        1.019  0.979  0.961  \n                                   \nAces          1.073  0.920  0.772  \nSvc Wnr       1.027  0.971  1.019  \nDbl Faults    0.912  1.097  0.525  \n1st Sv In     1.030  0.967  1.006  \n                                   \nServer Wnr    1.079  0.914  0.630  \nServer UE     0.945  1.060  1.046  \n                                   \nReturn Wnr    1.003  0.997  0.393  \nReturner Wnr  1.022  0.976  0.988  \nReturner UE   0.954  1.050  1.085  \n                                   \nRally Len     0.969  1.034  1.095  <\/pre>\n
What sticks out here is Roger’s dearth of return winners on break point.  He often seems to be an aggressive player–sometimes even too aggressive, but apparently he doesn’t do a lot with his first shot.  Considered in light of “The Shot” that Djokovic scored against him, it provides another window into the small differences that kept Federer from winning the biggest matches this year.<\/p>\n
Here’s more on Federer’s return game, again with numbers from the perspective of players serving against him.<\/p>\n
SCORE   Pts   Win%    Exp  Rate  \ng0-0    387  57.9%  58.8%  0.98  \ng0-15   161  57.8%  56.9%  1.02  \ng0-30    68  51.5%  56.4%  0.91  \ng0-40    33  66.7%  55.3%  1.20  \n                                 \ng15-0   221  57.9%  60.1%  0.96  \ng15-15  186  62.9%  57.8%  1.09  \ng15-30  104  55.8%  56.4%  0.99  \ng15-40   68  61.8%  55.1%  1.12  \n                                 \ng30-0   128  58.6%  61.4%  0.96  \ng30-15  170  59.4%  59.6%  1.00  \ng30-30  127  66.9%  57.5%  1.16  \ng30-40   84  54.8%  55.5%  0.99  \n                                 \ng40-0    75  61.3%  61.7%  0.99  \ng40-15  130  60.0%  60.9%  0.99  \ng40-30  137  59.1%  58.7%  1.01  \ng40-40  201  53.2%  56.4%  0.94  \n                                 \ng40-AD   94  52.1%  55.4%  0.94  \ngAD-40  107  53.3%  57.3%  0.93  <\/pre>\n
Apparently Fed returns under pressure better than he serves under pressure.  He wins more points than expected when returning at both 40-AD and AD-40.  Oddly, he had a tough time when returning at 30-30 but considerably more success at deuce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Continuing with our point-by-point player profiles, let’s look at Roger Federer. Despite a down year, his service game remains one to be envied and emulated. His more conservative return game also provides a contrast to the styles of Djokovic and Nadal. Using all of his grand slam matches from 2011, we can begin to analyze … Continue reading Point-by-Point Profile: Roger Federer<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585","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=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}