Same Serve, Different Result

I recommend reading the set-up from my last post if you haven’t already. The take away was that Djokovic’s down the T serve on ad court was devastating against Sinner, and he didn’t overuse it. Since I had already created this analysis for the semifinal, I thought it would be nice to look at the men’s final as a point of reference where Djokovic obviously didn’t have the same success against Alcaraz. On the contrary, on the ad court he won a respectable 71% of first serve points hit wide. But when hitting down the T, he won only 44%, which was definitely not a fluke. While the Sinner match shows that in terms of picking the direction of his first serve, Djokovic served either well (wide) or crazy-well (down the T), the Alcaraz match shows that on that same ad court–so important for winning those break points–he served either well (wide) or…pretty poorly down the T by any pro’s standard. Maybe that Alcaraz forehand is just too fearsome.

And what’s more, Alcaraz may have found a similar Achilles heel on Djokovic’s return game that Djokovic found with Sinner. On the deuce court this time, Alcaraz won 85% of the first serve points he hit down the T compared to 56% of points won when served wide–this result was VERY robust–and this despite hitting there less frequently. There was no indication that Carlos saved those T serves for clutch/break points this time though, and after all those kinds of points tend to happen on the ad court where he won plenty of points no matter the direction of serve.

Kinda cool. And the final kicker is that if we isolate Djokovic’s first serves on the ad court and look at his serving patterns, something else sticks out. The average male pro player tends to serve close to randomly and if anything, they overdo the wide, T, wide, T, wide, T pattern as if they’re trying too hard to appear random. They switch their target 64% of the time on average according to a recent study. Over all from the round of 32 on, Djokovic switched 40% of the time, including in the Alcaraz match. Compared that to Alcaraz who switched his service direction exactly 50% of the time in the final…wow, exactly 50%. In other words, Novak might have been just a little bit predictable on his first serves, and I’m guessing Carlos’ eyes are better than mine.