The Finite Jest
Rafael Nadal gets it. He understands the importance of the serve at Wimbledon, even in this era when rallies there can be longer than they sometimes are on the red clay of Paris*—*an odd fact that can make us forget that the serve is still a more deadly tool on grass than on any other commonly-used surface.
ESPN's Greg Garber had an interesting piece on this subject just the other day, but get it while it's hot, friends and fans in the U.S.*—*Mardy Fish is the only American man who's survived the first week of play, and judging from how many break-point opportunities he blew before Robin Haase quit (there's no truth to the rumor that he defaulted because of a bad case of boredom), Fish may not be with us much longer.
But Rafa gets it, and not just because he's grown accustomed to living by his wits against whatever big server Wimbledon*—or any other tournament—can throw at him. Very few clay-bred players are as vested in their serves and show a comparable degree of respect for the shot. This has paid off for Nadal in more ways than one, and on numerous occasions. Take the U.S. Open triumph that earned him the career Grand Slam. Fairly beaming, Rafa continually talked about how his serving confidence and efficiency went up a significant notch—*enough to be the key to his win at Flushing Meadows.
Yesterday, after Nadal and Gilles Muller played a mini-break-free tiebreaker through ten points, Nadal was finally able to win a point against the Muller serve*—*notably, off one of the rare second serves Muller had been forced to hit to that point in the match. Nadal accepted the balls to serve at 6-5, and carefully examined one in that signature manner of his (you half-expect him to extend his arm, holding the ball aloft, and exclaim: Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a man of infinite jest). Then he took a long look across the net, sizing up his prospects, calibrating the percentages.
To that point, all the serving razzle-dazzle had poured from the racket of Muller. The match began yesterday, when Nadal had all he could handle in Muller's lefthanded s(w)erve. Muller, who's just ranked No. 92 and rolled into Wimbledon by virtue of a wild card, had served up 37 aces in his first-round match with Tommy Haas, and even though Milos Raonic had to retire shortly after the start of his second-round battle with Muller, the survivor demonstrated against Nadal that neither his ace output nor the 76 percent first-serve conversion percentage he posted against Haas were flukes.
Muller's serve percentage remained well above 75 percent through his entire Wimbledon, which helps explain why Nadal looked to be in such deep trouble yesterday (when Muller had two set points in the first and only set they completed) and looked like he was no better off in the early going today. At Wimbledon, it's still possible to serve someone off the court, so why screw around hitting all those forehand and backhands*—*just to get people talking about how great it is that they slowed down the grass?
Nadal knows this. So after his Yorick moment, he took extra, conspicuous care to set himself up to serve his long-awaited set point. And if you know Nadal, you know he's all about setting up. Crack! He delivered a good first serve to Muller's backhand. Muller kept the point alive, but after a brief rally Nadal whacked an enormous bolo forehand to win the point*—and second set. And we learned from Brad Gilbert that his son Zach had figured out that players who win the second-set tiebreaker in any given men's match at Wimbledon, at least this year, go on to win the match an overwhelming amount of the time—*14 of 16. It's a good stat to remember, and test, as time goes on.
Anyway, the Nadal-Muller match nicely demonstrated the importance of the serve. Had two or three points gone the other way, Muller might have been up two sets to none, and serving prowess wasn't the main reason for that. It was the only reason. Conversely, Nadal's understanding of the value of the serve allowed him to close out the second set and get himself clear of the threat posed by Muller.
This wasn't the only episode that underscored my continuing fascination with the art and importance of the serve this week, but it did add to my growing feeling that as good as the game is today, we're a little thin when it comes to great servers who can also do other things required by the game. I don't think anyone would characterize Nadal as a great server, especially given his natural advantage as a left-hander. But Rafa is a wise and prudent server, who knows how big a factor the serve can be in a match. That's partly why he's always been inordinately and at times puzzlingly scared of the game's foremost bombardiers. And it's also partly why he's been successful surviving them.
The other day, Feliciano Lopez put on a Muller-esque demonstration of left-handed serving that knocked one of the tour's major ace machines out of the tournament. Andy Roddick had no real answer for that classic "bend it like Beckham" southpaw delivery of Lopez's, which makes me wonder how any of today's players would have fared against the master of the lefty cutter, Goran Ivanisevic. I don't want to put down any of the reigning icons, but I have real questions about how they would handle a guy who not only knows how to serve big, but how to build his entire game around that facility. For today's top players were incubated at a time when the ability to take huge cuts from the baseline, shot-after-shot, became the Grail.
I've also wondered if guys like Lopez and Muller put so much stock in the serve because they have nothing better in which to invest, or because they've come to understand something that others don't about the stroke. It's probably a little bit of both.
Roddick has been engaged with similar issues. The enormous advantage his big serve gives him on grass is diminished by the way the rest of his game is designed. Has anyone with such a big serve ever made it appear that the shot is basically a rally-starter that keeps rallies from starting when it's well deployed? Win or lose, Muller and Lopez showed what you can do when you build on an outstanding serve. You end up with a more fully-realized approach to the game, even if your relative dearth of other critical skills will prevent you from, say, riding those assets to the final.
Roddick's game is less service-based than it could be, although I can't put down his loss to Lopez, like so many commentators did, to the fact that he strives so hard to be a complete player. The bottom line is that if he can serve his way to tiebreakers (which he did once again the other day), he ought to be able to serve his way through them (which he did not). At his best, Roddick blows people away, but he can't count on winning those three or four key baseline-based, rally points that determine the outcome of a match. That's what separates him from the Federers and Nadals of this world. And how do you study or tweak for that?
Make no mistake, Roddick knows the value of winning that precious handful of points in which the serve plays no huge role; he just can't always act on it successfully. Nadal understands the importance of the serve, even if his own delivery will never be held up as a model to copy, and he acts on that knowledge with considerably better results. That's one of the main reasons he's in the fourth round, and so many players, including Roddick, are not.