Roger Federer’s Serve vs Andy Roddick

While I appreciate your analysis, I respectfully disagree. Roger simply stepped his service game up yet another level. I'm not sure the best returners in the game could have withstood a performance like that!!!

very accurate analysis
that's all I had to say
hope you'll continue that way

Great site and love the new features you are coming up with!

Keep up the good work!

Will, it's a very interesting analysis that you point out and one that will forever, in my opinion, be debated by the "experts". The question, especially at Wimbledon is which is more important, the serve or the return. When Sampras and Agassi were at there best, I heard the same question. Ironically, neither Fed or Andy are especially known for their returns. Both have two of the best serves in the game today. Therefore, I believe in this case your conclusion to be correct, at least for the final game of the match. Prior to that, I think Andy handled Roger's serve better than Roger handled Andy's. In my opinion, neither handled either's serve all that well for most of the match. With such a discrepancy pointed out by your statistics in favor of Federer, it would've made sense to say that he should have won the match much easier. Therefore, that I have to conclude that the age old question I alluded to at the beginning of this should again favor the server, not the returner.

You have to give it to Federer serving a record 50 aces a match. I believe it's Federer's consistency during big points that made his disguise so much more lethal on his serve.

Can it be that the match was a Final that Federer suddenly stepped up his game???

It seems that fed seems to step up his serve speed against huge servers: against Haas and soderling avg. down the middle speeds were 118, 118 (Haas) and 120, 116 (Soderling), but against Karlovic it was 125, 120, and Roddick 125, 118. In these matches it also seems he hits a bit more slice on his serve out wide on the deuce court, as the averages for this serve against Karlovic and Roddick were lower than against Haas and Soderling, suggesting more spin to capitalise on the poorer service returns. This may have also brought the average service speed down, suggetsing he was serving similarly througout all of the matches

seems he leaves his best for when it's really needed, though conditions were extremely quick against Soderlign as the grass had been baking all day, and fed was not doing exceptionally well on return. I also think that fed's return let him down in the match, along with the unforced errors when he got broken: even Roddick said "for the first time ever Roger was having problems picking up my serve"...and federer also found it hard to break haas, soderling etc. maybe something wasn't "clicking" for fed on return this wimbledon so it made the match a lot closer than it should have been...but the speed nubmers suggest fed stepping up the serve, as someone said, maybe he started being mroe aggressive and risk taking : faster down the T, more slice out wide, when he saw A-rod's problems ...many aces

Wow! Amazing stat analysis that no doubt makes a strong case that indeed it was Roddick's return that made the difference. There is no question either of their serve mechanics changed for the final, and I would have a hard time disagreeing with your analysis had I not watched the match. This much was clear to me on that day: Federer was serving fantastic. The majority of his aces were so well placed that it didn't matte who was on the other side of the net. Sometimes athletes just get in the zone and I think Roger was in the zone that day. That being said, I think it's relevant to point out that Roddick the only two breaks of the match until the final game. So if you conceed that Roger served better that day than he had all tournament and still failed to hold serve two times to Andy's 1, Andy returned well enough that day to win.

hi Will,

Roddick has been outstanding!

is there anyway you can post videos of Roddick serves in slow motion?

thank you.

Hi loi. Visit our pro strokes library... there's some slow motion of Roddick there.

in my opinion ,ANDY was fantastic ,he can beat anyone ,in the final but something
can not chage on this game yet ,....concentration at oponent serve game ,
ROGER is diferent ,he change the game ,force, efect, and the serve until the oponent ,lose her confidence , and only if he leads he concentrate only for serving game,

ps. fed is the best serve returner ! in circuit

Stats always say the truth but only half the truth. it was a nice approach to try to compare the raise and fall in % of the deciding set compared to the rest of the tournie stats. Still, as tennis is a game that you don't just have to play good or bad but just win the nessesarry points from your opponents i'd give it to Fed for doing just right that when he really needed it. he was mostly outplayed during the match put raised his performance of serve when all other approaches failed to give him anything. roddick was a pleasant surpise to me and i would call his performance anything but a 'choke'. he played lights out and it is a shame to be blamed for finally losing it as luck also had part in it. His only probable 'folding' could be the 2nd set breaker but he still came out of it stronger and really made a proud man out of himself (even me). Hat's off for Andy and for (probably) the first time Hat's off for Fed for his (imo) best performance (at least under pressure) in a grand slam final....
P.s. yellow fuzzy guys ....you are doing a great job ...thanks....

Roddick's serve return was obviously going to be poor against Federer as he just is not the same caliber. The reason the match was close was because of many many unforced errors by Federer in the opening sets. The reason the match ended in Federer stopped making so many hiccups as the match went on.

Like Ivo Karlovich, Roddick can serve his absolute best and should still lose to Federer unless Roger takes himself out of the match by making too many unforced errors (which he nearly did).

i agree with Will. Roddick's return was poor, unbelievably poor in that match. Federer should buy Roddick a gift for contributing to that ace record. Roddick's weapon has been his serve all along since turning pro, and if an opponent manages to get the ball back, just get the ball back, nothing fancy or spectacular return or anything, then Roddick is neutralized. other observation i have about Roddick is that his footwork is not that great; he's slow (relatively that is, comparing to players at his level.) and he should throw away that chip-n-charge out of his bag of tricks; those shots are just so inviting for his opponents to pass him.

It wasn't Roddick's return of serve that lost him the match. It was the winners that Federer had on the groundstrokes plus the crucial errors that Andy made in the second set tiebreak and the final set, as a few others have cited. Federer had 85 winnners other than his 22 service winners, while Andy had only 12 winners other than his 62 sevice winners.

I completely agree with your analysis on Roddick's return. It appears to me that Andy gives up a lot more aces to other players and not just to Federer. I would be curious to see other players ace percentage vs. Roddick, for example Lleyton Hewitt. I am sure you will find his ace % was higher against Roddick than in his matches in prior rounds.

I also would like to comment that I thought Roddick played great and served great. Even though his ace % may have been lower than in prior matches, I think his strategy wasn't to just bomb aces, but to mix spins, hit body serves, and keep Federer off balance. Roddick had a ton of free points on his serve and in addtion to those he also forced some pretty weak returns than enabled him to immediately be on offense and end a point.

I would also like to know what happened to Roddick in the final game of the match. He hit the frame on at least 3 ground strokes. Was the sun and shadwos a factor, was he fatigued, was it bad bounces, was it nerves? Andy is not one to ever make excuses so we may never know.

Will, I agree with you. I have all the matches on DVD and Federer had been serving well the whole tournament. Patrick and John were talking about it a lot. I checked out the average serve speed and he actually served SLOWER in the Finals than in the last two matches on average.

I also checked the ace count and found out that MANY of them were at Roddick's backhand side. So I'm guessing that Roddick was protecting against the slice out wide and the sampras slice down the T.

All that said...I'm still very proud of Roddick and his improvement.

Although Roger had 50 aces and 22 service winners, Andy had 27 aces and 62 service winners or 17 more points from his serve ( as I mentioned on previous post of July 7 on your previous analysis). So it appears Roger's return of serve wasn't so good either. But Roger did have a slightly better percentage of total serves returned :
37.2 % to Andy's 36.5 % .

I think you are right on.
Roddick seems to return most short balls. Even if they are hit very hard, in
reality they come right to Roger and he is a master at reading the directions and
placing them for more short but hard hit balls.

Roddick's return of serve must improve by the US OPEN.

I would agree with Randy's comment if I hadn't actually watched every point of the entire match. Stats are intersting and fun to play with but watching Andy stand almost like a statue when receiving the serve really told the story. Andy's game matched Federer's in every other way. His return is what did him in. Even if he couldn't read Federer's serve (and who could blame him!) he could have guessed once in a while. Did Federer seve better in the finals? Maybe. Did he serve THAT much better? No way. Hopefully, Andy will spend his time between Wimbledon and the US Open working on his return. He's elevated every other part of his game. If he could put the last piece of the puzzle in place he might just live up to all that potential!

It is very stupid me to have any comment because I haven`t watched the final match. But, I could agree with you. Roger couldn`t achieve such a great percentage without help of Roddick. I know FED, he did this with his mind. Like Sampras used to do. Like snake hypnotise frog. But this are the real champions

I disagree with Orangeater that tennis needs more stats, don't like No Child Left Behind either, don't favor spending health care funds on statistical outcomes whether humans or animals (their legs are either down or up). It was enough to watch a surprisingly close match here in Winston-Salem Davis Cup where Michel Llodra's serve was good but not great like Andy Roddick's. Andy's returns were okay, especially down the line, but he had some problems with the lefty, buzz-saw spin. But I'm sure Andy is working on returns right now. As with anybody else, they'll either get worse or better.

Dear Will,

Another, excellent thought provoking video - Thanks!

While a number of people have commented on the stats part of your analysis, my question is now not whether there was a return strategy problem (you answered this in my last comment), but rather what should Roddick have done. You previously mentioned that Nadal would have moved back, etc., but as we all know Roddick is not Nadal (especially movement wise). Andy had the strengths he had at the time of the match and while clearly this is an area for him to improve on, I would be grateful for some tactical advice on what to do in such situations (for Andy and myself, a rather big and slow moving guy).

Best Regards,
Brian

I might have mentioned this before, but either I am completely off or you missed that part! It is about nonreturnable serves from both players. I think that Andy had many more points off of his serve when you count both aces and those that Rodger touched but they didn't make it back into the court.
That leads me to believe that Andy was actually serving better then Rodger in this final. Hope to hear an answer to this!

All the best!

Fedja

Hey Fedja,
I think I agree with you. I mentioned this in the other thread where I cited stats from Bud Collins blog about the number of unreturned serves. Federer had a horrible time dealing with Roddick's serve. Even Roddick mentioned it later that Fed for the first time ever could not read his serve. Anyway, like you I could be off with my reading of the stats but here is my original post from the previous thread :

Aces alone do not tell the whole story. What about service winners? Bud Collins has the following stats on his blog: 62 service winners for Roddick, 22 service winners for Fed. If you add up Roddick’s 27 aces he ends with 89 unreturned serves vs Fed’s 72. So, I would say Federer had a worse returning day than Roddick.

According to the Wimbledon site, Roddick had 74 overall winners (including service winners) vs 107 winners for Federer. I am not sure how accurate Bud Collin’s stats are because that would mean that Roddick had only 12 winners not coming off his serve while Fed had 85 winners. Assuming the stats are correct or close to correct, Federer played a much better match and was let down by his return of serve, especially during break points and all those 30-30 situations. What do you think?

I am still very curious in knowing how many aces Federer had when the game was 30-0. I doubt they keep stats like that, but it seemed that Roddick would give Federer the aces at 30-0 and 40-0 either once he knew the game was pretty much over, or just to conserve energy. Commentators kept saying that Andy played way more sets than Roger, especially in tough QFs and SFs, so maybe Andy realized cardio and endurance might be an issue so he did fight over 30-0 games.

Anyone agree or disagree?

I agree totally. In a five setter final of a major, one has to survive six prior consecutive big matches. Energy levels are just as critical as serving stats in the final. Roddick's fitness has improved but it is not as good as Fed's. Roddick must have taken this in consideration at the end of the match. Save energy any way you can. And I believe it ewas his lack of energy at the end that cost him the match.

The answer is clearly that Roddick's return game suffered. I don't have any stats to back them up because I don't need them. All you have to do is watch a few matches between Federer and Roddick and you'll see that Roddick routinely has no clue where the serve is going and is caught flat-footed without even getting a racket on the ball numerous times.

I don't think any avid tennis watcher, nor Roddick himself, would claim that Roddick's return game is any good at all -- his footwork is mediocre at best in terms of his court positioning, anticipation and first step.

Bottom line, Federer did what we normally does to Roddick and that is to turn the tables and out-ace him.

If you review Federer - Roddick matches, you will see that Federer often out aces Roddick. This is not based on serves but how the Serve->Return of the opponents matchup. Since Roddick has better ace numbers against most others than Federer, it implies to me that Federer's return of Rodick's serve is superior to Roddick's return of Federer's serve.

Will, your point about making adjustments is important! I don't see Andy changing return position, timing, guessing, etc which Roger does. Andy tends to put his head down and walk to the otherside when aced. Roger seems to go for it more, looks and thinks and changes something next time!

You are dead on with the serving stats, Federer seems to raise his game in big matches and he definitely did that with his serving.

Will, Another way to look at those percentages is that in the Final, Federer hit almost twice as many aces percentage-wise (21% v. 39%) while Roddick hit half as many (32% v. 16%). However, I think your initial analysis is correct. After all, you can only hit an ace if your opponent fails to get to the ball and hit it. It is a combination of both of course-great serving and not so great returning.

Just as in baseball, a no-hitter is a combination of great pitching and poor batting. I would argue that poor batting against poor pitching would still result in a hit or two.

No offense but I still dont see how that proves that Roddick returned badly during his match. What if roger just served better? Maybe you would say, no one can serve that much better in just a few days, but then couldnt i say no ones return could turn so badly in just a few days?

Hey Will, great name! The point of the analysis was to show that there was a statistical aberration in the final RE: ace percentages. While it's possible that Roger had an unbelievable serving day, the numbers suggest something else.

Will,
With all the stuff about Andy's inability to return Fed's serves, how does one explain that Andy won the first set by breaking Fed and should have won the second set in the tiebreaker. Andy lost that second set tiebreaker because he couldn't handle an easy put-away volley, not because he couldn't return Fed's serve. I still stick to my opinion that Andy folded at the end (he was broken on his serve) because Fed was mentally tougher (and probably phisically tougher too) when it counted, not because Andy couldn't return Fed's serve.
Barry

thats a very impressive analysis, federer might be my favorite player but i must admit if roddick would have returned better he could beat federer and maybe get in the top 3 maybe

Maybe Federer has this little something unexplainable that a champion has...this time he needed to serve better than his usual average to win Roddick and the tournament and he did it , he served better than never before. Thats the result of a champion, his mind and body found the way to win no matter the % of serve and the court positioning of the opponent...

Thanks for all you given everyone who uses this site. As to Andy's return, where is he positioned to receive first serves. How does his position compare to the other players Roger faced during the tournament. With regard to Roger's ace percentage before and during the final, what was his average speed of serve before and virses Andy.

I noticed that he was standing pretty close to the baseline for the serves. I thought he should move back some given the trouble he was having getting to them.

Fed's average speed was very close to all of his other matches. Federer’s fastest serve against Roddick was 135mph and his fastest serve in any previous match was 131mph. My guess is that once he saw how much trouble Roddick was having, he really started getting aggressive on the serves. I don't have any stats to back that up, though.

I think, maybe he stood so close to the baseline because his footwork isn't terribly good and Federer's serve range is pretty wide.

I'm not sure Federer would get more aggressive when he noticed Roddick was struggling -- why mess with a good thing?

Yeah Will I agree. Roddicks return was probably the deciding factor in the match. He just didn't get the job done on that end and it must have affected him knowing that Federer was dominating him with his serve when it should have been him dominating Federer. But that how it is when you play the best in the game.

Just want to thank Will for this awesome site! You explain everything so well and disassemble what the top players are doing so that myself and everyone willing and open to listen can go out and apply some of the stuff you bring up.

I have really upped my game recently in no small way due to your insights, so thanks a lot!

For example today I creamed one of my singles partners 6-2, 7-5 (he has won our last two matches). In the second set he was up 5-1 because i dipped and he played really well in the beginning og the set, but I came back with a vengeance...
I stuck to my plan: Just return his powerserve and bring it in play and thereby let him work his tail of to win his service game and thereby slowly draining him. Get a very high percentage of your first serve in and place it well. Be patient and drag out the point and wait for the kill or your opponents mistake because most players will want to finish it off. Don't go so much for winners because I more often than not fail them and thereby give away the point (I went for 1/10 maybe less) but instead stress the opponent by the placement. Mix it up: powerserve vs placement of serve, dropshots vs baseline, power forehand winners vs placement from side to side with accuracy.
This is also inspired by what I think Federer did in the Wimbledon final and many other games. Federer is like a casino - he almost always wins.

Anyways, thanks again and keep it up Will!!!

Kind regards
Martin :-)

I am in complete agreeance that A-Rod's return game let him down more than Fed just served him off the court. Certainly Roddick was pretty miserable against Fed's 1st, but I thought he didn't do enough with Fed's 2nds either. I haven't seen any stats on A-Rod vs. Federer's 2nds though.

...Which leads me to my point. I'm a stat loving American sports fan, and I think tennis is severely underserved when it comes to stats. (I think Jon Wertheim mentioned something about this a couple months ago, too.) When I'm watching a match, any number of statistical questions will pop into my head. When watching the final for example, it might have been something like, "what is Fed's serving % when he's ahead in a game vs. when he's behind or facing breaks", or "% chance the player who serves first has to with a 5th set" and so on. So I credit you not only for your insight, but on digging up the stats to support it.

Awesome site, keep it up.

PS, There's no metric to support this observation, and I haven't heard anyone share in my opinion, but Roddick's footwork appeared to break down over the last couple games. So you might also fault mental/physical exhaustion or injury for his loss because he's going to win a serving contest with anyone 4 of 5 times.

I would like to know the stats for Fed's aces in the 5th set alone. I think Andy's service game could have suffered more due to exhaustion after playing the longest 5th set in a final at Wimbledon. I was also looking at Wimbledon.org at the serve placements. As always, Fed was hitting the corners pretty consistently. I think this plus the length of a match combined to hurt Roddick. Also, Andy had amazing serve stats coming in, but I believe Fed has one of the best return games in tennis. Even if he can't get the ball in, he almost always gets a racquet on it. This could also cause Andy's ace % to drop. What about the % of service winners in general? Is it as lop-sided as the aces?

i agree with you, will. federer's serve was the same throughout the tournament, but only in the mechanics. if you look at the 'speed of serve' statistics of the final vs the rest of the tournament, federer hit much faster and more powerful hits on average in the final than he did in the rest of the tournament. that's what i think had the biggest contribution to his 50 aces.

"if you look at the ’speed of serve’ statistics of the final vs the rest of the tournament, federer hit much faster and more powerful hits on average in the final than he did in the rest of the tournament."

Where are you getting this from? Doesn't agree with what I find on the Wimbledon site, e.g. Fed's average 1st and 2nd serve speeds versus Roddick were 118, 98; versus Kohlschreiber, 119, 98; versus Garcia-Lopez, 118, 98. Fastest serve speed varies per match, yes; but the averages seem quite consistent.

it's just something i heared. i could be that it was incorrect

To be fair to Andy's Ace stats.

It was quite obvious that one of Andy's service strategies was to belt the ball straight at Roger. Yes Roger gets a racquet on the ball and Andy takes the Ace out of the equation, but in some respects, especially considering he was playing against Roger Federer, it was the safer tactic, which quite obviously worked well in the match.

The thing is, if you serve out wide to any player in respect to where they are returning your serve, you are opening up the court, and especially against somebody like Roger Federer, doing so, is fraught with dangers, because if he does get racquet on it, the ball may well get hit for a winner, even if it is only inadvertently.

Think about it in terms of your own serve experience, how many times have you hit a really good serve, only to end up forcing your opponent to hit a miracle shot return, all because you have left them with no other option?

You're right about Roddick's serve strategy. I may have characterized things poorly when I said that Federer has a good return and implied that that was why Andy's ace % was down -- that implies that Federer was doing some damage on Roddick serve, which absolutely wasn't the case until the last game of the match.

I totally agree that Roddick's return weakness killed him more than what Fed did. I've looked through the serving and match stats a lot and found a couple interesting things. For one, Federer's fastest serve against Roddick was 135mph. His fastest serve in any previous match was 131mph. His average wasn't really any higher, but I think that Roddick's poor returning actually allowed Federer to be more aggressive with his serves. It was a bit of a vicious cycle for Roddick.

Federer served to one side of the box or the other. He only had a total of FOUR first served that were in in the middle of the box. The outside shots were evenly distributed. This made it harder for Andy to get to those first serves.

Roddick returned as poorly against both Murray and Melzer as he did Fed. In 4 sets, he gave up 25 and 26 aces respectively. So, Roddick needs to spend a LOT more time on his return game. But, it wasn't substantially worse against Fed than his other top competition. One thing I'd like to know as well is how much Roddick's hip flexor injury contributed to his poor service returns. I don't have the match recorded so I was unable to find that one.

Also, Roddick absolutely OWNED Federer when he served to Fed's backhand in the deuce court. He only hit 17 aces but Andy won 56 out of 59 1st serve points there. It didn't help Roger at all to get his racquet on these. Roddick's averaged 131mph and his 143mph serve was to this spot.

There's more, but I gotta run and play :)

That's an interesting # RE: Roddick serving to the deuce court.

Roddick's return game may have been the weakest part of his performance all tournament, and it may not have been substantially worse against other opponents, but that's somewhat besides the point imo. My point was simply that his poor return lost him the match, not that it was worse on Sunday than the previous two weeks.

"My point was simply that his poor return lost him the match, not that it was worse on Sunday than the previous two weeks.”

Totally agree. If you look at Roddick's matches, you will noticed a interesting phenomena that normally his opponent will have more aces than Roddick has! That's the question I asked hundreds time: There must some reason for Roddick cause his poor serve return.

But keep in mind, all of us know Roddick has the pool serve return. It must have been considered by both side before the match. I think beside serve return, one bad strategy of Roddick was serve his second serve to Federer's backhand, Federer then chop slice ball to Roddick's backhand front court, then Roddick get trouble.

"My point was simply that his poor return lost him the match, not that it was worse on Sunday than the previous two weeks."

I totally agree, although it may not have come out in the post. I was trying to add that this is not a one-time problem for Roddick. I think it also reinforces your point that Roddick's poor returning had more to do with Fed's ace count than Federer serving unbelievably.

I really think that Roddick weakness was how he was returning the serve. Roddick was not even moving to try to hit the ball. Federer was able to see where the serve will be going as he is able to do against Ivo Karlovic...

Very nice stats, but that I see ind the final was Andy Roddick serves against Roger Federer's body and you can say that it not is an ace but that was just so good bicause Roger Federer return the serv but that going out evry time.

Great point. I have always felt that the number of service winners is more important than number of aces. But I do agree that Will's point about Roddick's relatively weak returning contributed to Fed's hi number of aces.

Tien -- Nice to see you on the court today. If I had a second chance to make this video I would rephrase how I talked about Andy's serve... I may have given the impression that Roger's return accounted for the drop in Andy's ace %, when it was actually his decision to serve into the body so frequently.

Sorry, the 2nd paragraph in my answer above is rather stupid; something along the lines of this stat (not Aces but that's not so important) is obviously already represented in various ATP return-of-serve stats, where Roddick is way down from the leaders.

The stat about Roddick's return is a good one. Maybe that will be included in the 3rd video in this series, assuming it gets to that, heh.

Nice effort with the stats - but I think you have at least 1 too many loose variables. Left unanswered is a key question: did Federer serve "better" for the Roddick match vs. his other matches in the tournament? One metric might be to look at literally all his made serves & see how well he was hitting the corners throughout the tournament vs. this match.

On the other hand you could bolster your argument (not making it ironclad, but nonetheless more convincing) by putting together similar stats for aces served by X many players (top 5, top 20, whatever you think is appropriate) in their tournaments vs. other players and then versus Roddick. If you found a consistent pattern where opponents served more aces against Roddick, you could certainly make a case he's got a poorer return of serve than he should. That still wouldn't be the final nail for your argument about this particular match, but it would at least get the lid on the coffin.