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: