Alcaraz x Musetti: Hamburg Final

Lorenzo Musetti defeated Carlos Alcaraz 6/4 6/7 6/4 in the final of the ATP 500 Hamburg. It was the Italian’s first ATP tournament win, who had to stay focused after blowing multiple match points in the second set tiebreaker.

This was a dramatic match without being consistently high quality. Yes, there were flashes of brilliance and both showcased a wide repertoire of shot-making and athleticism, but it featured a large number of errors that signal vulnerabilities in their games.

Musetti

Winners include shots that the opponent touched but did not get a fair play on. I only count topspin shots from ~ the baseline. I want to get an idea of how well the bread-and-butter forehands are working for both, so drop shots, short easy balls, and slices are not counted. Second-serve returns are counted.

Musetti’s game is far more suited to clay than any other surface. He plays from deep court positions and prefers to use a lot of height and spin off both wings. I think his forehand is susceptible on faster and lower bouncing surfaces, but today he did well to hurt Alcaraz when he was set from the middle or backhand corner with his forehand. By my count only 1 of Musetti’s 14 forehand winners came when he was moving to his forehand deuce side, the rest were when he was firmly set and had time. Musetti’s forehand technique features the flexed wrist and side-pointing racquet head that is becoming increasingly common on tour, with other players like Frances Tiafoe, Karen Khachanov, Alexander Zverev, Jack Sock, and Tommy Paul displaying similar traits. Can it be great? Maybe. While it can generate massive power and spin when it’s humming along, over the long arc of a career I believe the reduced wrist action and modern forehand have better outcomes.

Note the flexed wrist position and low racquet tip on the Musetti forehand. For comparison, Federer ~2012 displays an extended wrist and upright racquet head with his modern forehand technique. For more on the trend in forehand technique see here.

While Musetti’s backhand bled a lot of errors on the run (13 of the 17 happened with Musetti moving to his backhand side), Alcaraz struggled to actually find a pattern that could get Musetti in this position very often, mainly because the Alcaraz backhand struggled with change of direction and Musetti camped out in his backhand corner protecting that side. A look at the Spaniard’s numbers.

Alcaraz

Winners include shots that the opponent touched but did not get a fair play on. I only count topspin shots from ~ the baseline. I want to get an idea of how well the bread-and-butter forehands are working for both, so drop shots, short easy balls, and slices are not counted. Second-serve returns are counted.

Alcaraz never looked comfortable off either wing today. In previous rounds his forehand had been red-hot, but against the higher and heavier ball that Musetti uses the timing and power went amiss. We can see that his topspin forehand was pretty loose, and if you’ve been reading my prior match analyses of Alcaraz (like here) you’ll know that he is vulnerable to bleed errors on that side if you can keep him moving or off-balance, but what really hurt him today was the backhand. The opening game set the scene; two unforced errors off both wings gifted the break to Musetti. What made this match such an uphill battle was how many backhands he missed from the middle of the court; of the 22 errors, 15 came when he was set in position. I’ve written multiple times about the Alcaraz backhand, and how it is good but vulnerable to timing issues. His main issue is that he keeps the racquet head outside the hands (like Berrettini, Rublev, and Roddick) but he also lacks a good drop in the backswing. This creates a noisier and flatter swing, and I will keep pointing it out because I think it is a major reason for his inconsistency on that side.

David Nalbandian v Carlos Alcaraz. Note how Nalbandian’s left arm works back close to his body and the racquet tip is facing the back fence. Alcaraz’s tip is pointing more to the side, and his left elbow is away from his body. Nalbandian, Djokovic, Nadal, Nishikori, Safin, Hewitt, Murray, Medvedev, Sinner, Zverev, Tomic (yes, his backhand was world-class) all exhibit a full turn of the racquet that gets the tip facing the back fence before accelerating. This video from Intuitive tennis gives a good breakdown.

The video below shows a great comparison between Djokovic and Alcaraz on the backhand swing. As I touched on previously:

“As the video states (~5:25), can Alcaraz handle that technique? Absolutely, it’s a world-class backhand, “but there is a cost to everything, and the cost is going to be consistency and accuracy.”

I’ve likened tennis to poker in prior pieces because of the difficulty in winning consecutive points and games. An excerpt:

Tennis is a difficult sport to dominate because a player has the upper hand each time they get to serve; to be number 1 in the world only requires that you average ~55% of points won.¹ You’ll hear commentators talk about ‘percentage plays’ often as a way of communicating that fact. Like poker, the better player doesn’t win every point, but over time the percentages start to matter; a player with the weaker hand can get lucky on the river only so many times…Finding patterns of play that tip the percentages in your favour is the aim of the game; having better strokes and movement opens up more patterns that you can execute reliably, on top of simply being favoured in more of those patterns. This is why head-to-head wins can skew wildly based on surfaces and matchups.² So the ultimate aim is to improve the hand you’re currently sitting on. Part of that hand has been dealt for you—by the athletic gifts of your genes, how and where you were taught the game, and yes, I think your disposition counts some. Improving your hand is entirely based on what you do and how you do it. Improving your mentality can assist in playing your current hand better, but it is limited by what it is working with.³ By comparison, improving your technical or physical game is like swapping a King for an Ace; it improves your chances of winning and probably gives a boost to your mentality for free—winning breeds confidence (and increases testosterone).

One match is noise. We all know this, but both sides of the Alcaraz game have failed in important matches this year, and I believe a technical change is necessary if he wants to become a more consistent player. Whataboutisms, where the player in question (e.g., the Alcaraz backhand) hit that shot well, isn’t really a rebuttal if you accept that there is variance in performance. There is, but the very best have less of it on the downside; simple technique skews your performance variance in your favour. Another excerpt from a piece on Djokovic’s simple swings:

And in a game of percentages it’s why Djokovic has dominated the last 10 years. A bad day is akin to pocket Kings. It allows him to set his stall out and play a percentage game. His efficient and controlled technique coupled with movement and fitness allows that tactic. Very few can go toe-to-toe with him and it usually takes a monumental performance to pick him off over five sets.

There is no questioning that Alcaraz is a special player. He is a thoroughbred champion who repeatedly comes up with clutch shots when they are most needed. However, against other thoroughbreds (like Nadal and Djokovic, or Sinner for a peer), he is running uphill as his technique currently stands. So far this year many wins have come about because Alcaraz papers over his forehand and backhand inconsistencies with brilliant intangibles that you cannot teach; the drop shot feel, court awareness, and creativity are just expressions of pure talent:

From 4/5 in the second set until Alcaraz stole it 7/6, Alcaraz hit the drop shot 7 times, winning 6 of these points. Prior to this he had only won 1 drop shot point all match.

"The ultimate aim is to improve the hand you’re currently sitting on”

Good technique is more robust to changes in conditions, opponent, and mentality (nerves, fatigue). Over the years we have seen Federer take on a bigger racquet head to help his backhand and serve as he got older. We’ve seen Djokovic iron out the serve kinks from 2010 to now possess one of the smoothest spot-serves in the game with a delayed racquet head. We’ve seen Nadal improve his slice and volleys, often choking up on the grip to gain control. Thiem shortened his forehand swing and started to dominate the Big-3 on hardcourts. The very best are willing to make deliberate changes to equipment and technique if it means improving. They didn’t get better simply by playing the matches and assuming improvement would happen without deliberate practice. They battled, lost, analysed, and adapted.

A final quote I saw on Twitter attributed to Aldous Huxley:

“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”

1. In Djokovic’s incredible 2011 season (where he started 41-0) he won 56% of points for the year.

2. For example, Davydenko leads Nadal 6-5 in their H2H, but trails Federer 2-19. Or just look at Nadal’s record at Roland Garros: that left forehand pattern is amplified big time.

3. Lleyton Hewitt was mentally one of the best ever, but he played the second half of his career in an era of better players. His mentality didn’t help when the chasm in tennis ability grew too wide.