In yesterday’s morning recap, I made the following comment about Nadal’s baseline game:
The one baffling thing is Nadal’s reluctance to come to net. He was often standing right on the baseline, even hitting groundstrokes from a step inside the baseline. Yet he almost never came forward unless forced. Even with an imperfect net game, even against the passing-shot machine that is Djokovic, I think he would’ve been more successful taking advantage of some of those offensive positions.
In the comments, Tom Welsh laid out the flip side of the argument concisely:
During the Nadal-Djokovic match yesterday I noticed several occasions when each of those brilliant players came in to the net and was left looking like a hopeless beginner – either by a passing shot, or a sizzling ground stroke to the short ribs, or by a perfect lob landing just a couple of feet inside the baseline. I’m not tennis player, but it seems to me that no one can afford to come in these days unless the opponent is stretched to the breaking point. Even then, it’s taking a big risk.
That’s the argument in a nutshell. Even more briefly:
- PRO: Players should be more aggressive and come forward more often.
- CON: In the modern-day game, approaching the net is usually too risky.
Which is it?
Pick your poison
The first thing that needs to be understood is that, against an elite tennis player, anything is a risk. Short of a decisive smash, any shot you hit is likely to come back, and there’s a non-zero chance that what comes back is going to be a winner. Choosing to come forward isn’t a decision between risk and no risk, it’s a matter of degree.
The main difference is that, if you come forward and fail, you’ll look like a fool, and your opponent will look brilliant, in the ways Tom described. If you stay back and fail, it’s somehow more understandable–in a 15-stroke rally between top players, somebody has to lose. Of course, you lose the point either way.
One of the problems of arguing this point with anecdotal evidence is that I think we, as both fans and players, remember the brilliant passing shots and jaw-dropping lobs. If you rush the net and your opponent misses what would’ve been a sensational running forehand, you remember the amazing shot-that-almost-was. Human brains don’t default to probabilistic calculations, while brilliant moments catch and keep our attention.
Commentators, steeped in strategy of the 70’s and 80’s, will always want too much net-rushing. Most players will tend to stay back too much. If we can ever establish the proper opportunities to come forward, the “correct” answer will turn out to be somewhere in between.
Where the stats fail
Answering the question analytically will be very difficult, and given the information currently out there, it’s flat-out impossible.
In the meantime, let’s think through what it would take to answer the question. Starting with what I take to be the question itself:
Given his skillset, his opponent’s skillset, and each player’s position on the court, when should a player come forward?
That’s a lot of stuff we can’t quantify. Even if we posit a couple of generic pro players, it’s still an unanswerable question.
Particularly useless are existing net stats. Occasionally during a match, a broadcast will show us that so-and-so has won 5 out of 8 points at net. The commentators reliably chime in, usually suggesting that the player has better net skills that we give him credit for (perhaps he’s been playing some doubles lately), and that he would benefit by coming in more.
In most cases, those 8 points couldn’t be less relevant. Think back to Sunday’s Nadal-Djokovic match. Much of the time Nadal came forward, it was in response to a Djokovic drop shot. In other words, Nadal came forward on the defense! I’m guessing he lost most of those points. On the flip side, imagine Del Potro cracking a serve out wide, then coming in behind it to hit a swinging volley winner. That’s 1-for-1 on the net point tally, but it doesn’t say a thing about Delpo’s deftness of touch around the net.
A framework
Let’s imagine that we suddenly had access to Hawkeye’s shot-by-shot data. We’d know the hit point for every ball of every point of every match where the Hawkeye system was installed. (Drool.)
If we knew that, we could come up with a fairly simple model to estimate the likelihood of winning a point from any position on the court, against a certain quality of shot. Standing at the middle of the baseline smacking a 60 mph service return, you might have a 70% chance of winning the point. Stuck in the backhand corner after your opponent has cracked a 90mph groundstroke, and it might be more like 20%.
The details of the model aren’t important. What matters is that, with a certain data set, we could estimate the probability of winning a point given a variety of conditions.
Extending this framework to analyze a tactic like net-rushing wouldn’t be that complicated. Let’s say Nadal is standing on the baseline with a 70% chance of winning the point. No matter what he does afterward, he will probably hit a forehand into one corner or the other, after which we can once again estimate his probability of winning the point. From there, he has two choices: Come forward, or stay back. Some game theory might get involved, since his opponent will probably see him approach the net and may change his own strategy accordingly.
Again, we can work out the details when there is data to play with. Given these relatively simple figures, we could estimate Nadal’s probability of winning the point coming forward behind his forehand and staying back after hitting the shot.
The numbers would give a better way of judging whether a particular play is advisable. For Nadal, it may turn out that staying back is always smarter–after all, the numbers will probably tell us that, from any given position, he has a better chance than nearly anyone else of winning the point. But, say, Ivo Karlovic may be better off coming in behind the exact same shot from the same position. There’s a continuum between the extremes, of course, and we’ll need to know a lot more before we know what that looks like.
In the meantime, I’d still like to see Nadal come forward–and I’ll try harder to remember the times when his opponent goes for a blistering passing shot and misses.
Interesting and wide-ranging piece.
Like you say, it’s very difficult to generalise.
The main question is of course, why are modern players so reluctant to come into the net?
The two obvious answers are that modern string technology makes it possible to hit passing shots from just about anywhere and that modern players just aren’t very good there.
I think it’s a bit of both and they also feed each other in that if a player spends less time at the net then he’s not going to get a whole lot of practice volleying.
You mention Karlovic and he’s a perfect case in point. It’s not long ago he was just a serve. Now he’s among the best volleyers in the game simply because he’s worked hard and spent a hell of a lot of time at net in match situations.
No amount of training drills will substitute for that.
Guys like Djokovic and Nadal, just aren’t very good at the net and it pains me that when they hit a purple patch for a few matches, commentators get so carried away.
Just last year, John McEnroe said Nadal had better volleys than Federer which I think is just laughable.
In saying that, Federer’s volleys tend to be overrated as well. He’s among the best in the singles game but if you watch someone like Max Mirnyi or Leander Paes playing doubles, the gulf in class is obvious.
Again this could come down to practice and time spent at net during matches rather than technique, reactions and decision making.
Effective net play can still be effective in the modern game. In fact with heavier balls and slower surfaces I think it is nigh on impossible to get the better of a Nadal or Djokovic without coming to the net regularly.
Their defensive skills are simply too good, but when forced wide enough they will throw in floaty slices that should be food and drink for any pro at net.
It’s a matter of having the balls to keep coming forward when you get burned. That’s where modern players fall down. As soon as they get passed a couple of times they quit.
With the percentages weighted so heavily in favour of the baseliners today it’s always going to be tough at net but so many players are selling themselves short by being shit-scared to get there in the first place.
Jeff – It’s nice to see someone with your skill set delving into this kind of thing, which I think can help the game, though it may feel like wishful thinking to have the kind of data needed to fuel the analysis.
One area I’ve wondered about in this field of data analysis with professional tennis is LENGTH OF RALLY. As a coach of recreational and high school level players, my sense probably jives with the age old wisdom that players who can lengthen rallies tend to win more matches at and around their level of play (the outcome of individual matches need not be decided mainly by the long rallies played, as the player who can keep the ball in play longer may have a profound psychological influence on the way his opponent performs).
On clay at least, I think the same wisdom may apply to the pro circuit. With the number of better clay pros doing well on hard surfaces, there could also be value there.
You’d know better how to approach it than I, but if there were access to data on median rally length and match outcomes, I’d hypothesize that the pros with higher W/L career stats (over a clay season or career on clay) were usually the ones who :
– were involved in more long rallies in their matches; AND
– outperformed the norm for percentages of long rallies won.
There would probably be anomalies, and perhaps this doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know about the top pros. But it might suggest a way to evaluate an upcoming player’s prospects over time on the circuit. If a player had a very good tournament or two engaging in shorter than ‘average’ rallies AND had a lower than ‘average’ winning percentage of longer rallies than the players he had beaten, then one of two things would apparently have led to his upset wins:
– EITHER he repeatedly hit and forced more winners than usual for him;
– OR, none of his opponents played up to their ability against him.
Perhaps there could be some reason for all the opponents during this period to have performed badly against him, but it doesn’t come to mind. So, assuming the first reason (hitting more winners than usual) was borne out statistically, one could predict the player’s winning streak would soon end, probably in some frustration for him and in disappointment for those who had backed him or coached him.
If the player had a good traveling coach, the coach would likely understand what he’d seen going on. But, the data might help the coach communicate to the player what he needed to work on in order to replicate more consistent results. And, those watching (whether betting or not) would have a better sense of how reliable an indicator the positive results had been. The player should still feel positive about having shown his ability, and would have benefited in intangible ways from his wins. To replicate them regularly, he learns what he needs to work on.
I started wondering about this several years ago after watching the runs to the Oz Open finals of a couple of ‘shooters’ who could also counter-punch: Baghdatis in ’06 and Gonzalez in ’07. The only data available to support what seemed to be going on were unforced errors and winners (including aces), both of which involve some subjective recording, and which – even taken together over the course of a match, a tournament or a season – can be very misleading. Both of these men hit a ridiculous number of winners per match, and made relatively few errors compared to their winners (on the order of 3:1 ratios, as I recall, with in some matches over 100 winners having been hit). Commentators praised them and hyped their future in subsequent tournaments. For whatever reasons, they did not again quite reach that height in a major, and did not again enjoy a top 10 ranking except for their anomalous performances in and around that Oz Open (Fernando had reached the top 10 two months before that January and sustained it until the following January; Marcos time in the top 10 was only 10 weeks in the summer ’07). While the presence of GOAT level #1’s and 2’s and a very strong field of big hitters in the next tier could excuse their shortcomings for a while, I think their game plans and training flaws could have been apparent from their playing style, suggested (but not to my satisfaction) entirely demonstrated by the stats available on their winners and errors.
Curious what you think of this?
Rick
Rick,
I think you’re right, and your point doesn’t have to be limited to the specific types of players you mention. It’s certainly a plausible explanation for guys like Baghdatis, a great shotmaker who will have an occasional day where he’s as good as anybody.
The better stats we have, the more we’ll be able to identify lucky or outlying performances, whether because the player was out of his head or because the opponent was particularly weak that day. Certainly the high W/UE ratio would be a great example of that.
Thanks, Steve.
I agree with much of what you said. It’s a vicious cycle when players don’t improve their net game because they don’t come to net!
One huge advantage that this sort of statistical analysis would give us is that it might show players and coaches what opportunities would be open to them if a player’s net game were a little better–thus quantifying the advantage of spending more time of the practice court on particular skills.
Regarding the top singles players, I think their volleys are often extraordinary, but what’s lacking is the transition game. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen a top player hit an easy forehand approach shot from three or four feet inside the baseline only to send it long. If they can’t consistently hit that shot, it is definitely hopeless for them to come in much.
As a keen chess player, I have always seen a close parallel between chess and tennis. (Although there are glaring differences, such as the infinite variability of each tennis shot compared with the strictly limited choice of moves in a given chess position – not to mention the physical immobility of chess players). In chess, there is a long-established rule that “the player who has a positional advantage must attack or lose his advantage”. A corollary is that a player who tries to attack when he does not have a positional advantage can only succeed by accident (if his opponent flubs).
In tennis, the serve is equivalent to playing White at chess (you get to move first, thus gaining the initiative). Typically, the player of White builds up a strategic offensive in the hope of eventually being able to launch a direct attack. In tennis, this corresponds to a good serve followed by a rally of some length which eventually forces the opponent into an awkward position. At that moment, the really good tennis player strikes! The attack may take the form of a viciously lashed flat forehand, a passing shot, a drop shot, or (increasingly necessary at the top level) a “one-two”. We saw Djokovic play some lovely one-twos against Nadal starting with a drop shot which Nadal could return – but only to a specific point on the court. Djokovic was accordingly right there to put it away.
Coming to the net when the opponent is hopelessly out of position or off balance is obviously a great idea. The trouble is, the very top players are hardly ever hopelessly out of position! It seems to be above all a matter of being able to predict what your opponent will do – which gets easier if you can limit his possibilities by relentlessly piling on the pressure. Nowadays many players seem to be able to get to everything – except when their opponent reads their plans and plays the ball behind them! Then, of course, they have no hope at all of returning it, and the opponent doesn’t even need to paint the lines or hit it very hard.
Jeff,
Thanks for your response.
You didn’t address my larger point, which was that a ratio measuring relative success in longer than average rallies could be very helpful, perhaps more helpful than W/UE which has subjectivity built in to its creation. To succeed over time on the tour, players need to learn to consistently construct points that lead to their taking advantage of opportunities earned near the end of longer rallies. Many players can start hitting winners all over the place early in the rally and get some stunning results. But they won’t maintain those results for long.
Having a better than avg ratio in winning long points doesn’t mean you don’t have a good serve and win quick points, too. It simply means you don’t just rely on the quick ones to get you through.
PS – I like Tom’s comment. His analogy to chess (where White needs to take advantage of ‘serving first’ but can only do so by constructing play to give him better attacking opportunities).
Rick
Yep, it would definitely be interesting, and probably predictive, to know about success in long rallies. I can foresee measuring players along two axes–(1) service strength, whether that’s aces, service winners, or service points won in rallies 4 strokes or fewer; and (2) success in long rallies.
You can get away with being weak in one if you are very strong in the other (Isner is (1) only, young Nadal was (2) only), but some combination of the two would be predictive of success.
What would also be interesting there is looking at matchups. Someone like Isner relies very heavily on (1), so if he’s playing someone who has a very good return game, he would need to rely more on (2) to win the match. In extreme cases like Isner’s, that’s intuitive, but for most players, it’s harder to judge how much of their success is (1) and how much is (2), without numbers to back it up.
The net rushing question is an intersting area of investigation.
Players these days don’t come forward so often. And Nadal certainly “loves” the baseline. But what I find interesting is that staying at the baseline is actually losing strategy. Based on the MCP staying at the baseline give you more or less 45% chance of winning the point, while being around the net give you a +65% chance of winning the point. If you ask me I would be going for a strategy that on paper is going to help me win more than 50% of points. Not only would it be good for Nadal, it’s good for all players. If players would would look for the short balls to approach would be good for the game, and for the players.