Game Tactics of Roger Federer And Rafael Nadal For Wimbledon Championships 2019

The tennis gods, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal will be meeting each other after 11 years at All England Club. At Wimbledon 2008, the Spaniard concluded his Swiss nemesis’ 65-match winning streak on the grass-courts as Federer conceded his defeat to Nadal in a heroic manner.

According to the tennis expert, Craig O’Shannessy, Rafael Nadal has been quick with his points at Wimbledon this year. His average rally length lasts up to 3.5, which is a low number since Rafa’s rally lengths are expected to be 4.5 to 5. For the second seed, Roger Federer, his aggressive style of tennis allows him to keep his rally length about 3.4 and he purposely does it.

At Wimbledon Championships 2019, Rafael Nadal outnumbers Roger Federer in the count of aces served in the entire tournament. En route to the semifinals, Rafa has come up 48 aces overall, which are six more than what Federer has slammed so far in the tournament.

In the double-fault category the Spaniard has an average of 2 per match and the Swiss commits 1.6 double-faults per match. Also, the average first service speed of Nadal is 117 mph and Federer’s is 116 mph. Rafael Nadal has good control on his service games, Federer has to fathom his adversary’s service games for a spot in the Wimbledon 2019 finals and this year he is intimidated by Rafa’s serves.

Roger Federer has to serve and volley quite often in the match, he shouldn’t engage in lengthy rallies, and preferably close out the point with a SABR (Sneaky Attack By Roger). Presently, Federer is winning 56 percent of baseline points and during Australian Open 2017, the figure was 48 percent.

At Wimbledon 2019, World Number three, Roger Federer believes his baseline tactic is his strength, and as usual, his backhand has been delivering more errors than Nadal’s backhand. 

Craig O’Shannessy is also the strategy coach for Novak Djokovic and he believes, that there haven’t been any changes in the playing style of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. “Nothing. No, they’re exactly the same,” he said. “People think it changes dramatically. It doesn’t.”

“We used for Novak to beat Rafa in Australia, we used the semi-final here as our model. So we used a grass-court match as a hard court match with half a year apart. It’s normal. We use matches from 2015 all the time,” he added.