Auger-Aliassime vs Rublev: Madrid Final Recap

backhand trends — unreturned serves — serve mechanics

May 06, 2024

Before the match: an Announcement

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And with that, let’s get back to the tennis.

Andrey Rublev battled back from a set down to defeat Felix Auger-Aliassime 4-6 7-5 7-5 in the final of the Madrid Masters on Sunday to clinch his second 1000 title (2023 Monte Carlo). Rublev now leads FAA 6-1 in their ATP H2H.

Coming into the final, it had been noted that Rublev had adopted an Agassi-esque baseline position throughout the tournament in a bid to rush his opponents:

This graphic was from the beginning of the Fritz-Rublev semifinal.

Such a court position suits the Russian’s shorter swings, and especially his backhand; a shot that can be exposed when forced to generate racquet head speed, or when he is out of position and unable to use his legs or momentum to drive the shot (but also a shot the Russian has tinkered with in the last 12 months. More on that below).

However, the Russian — who’s aggressive game is usually wrapped in a feverish emotional intensity — came out lethargic in the opening set. FAA, aided by two double faults from his opponent, struck a down-the-line backhand return that sealed the break in the opening game:

If FAA can develop a reliable attacking backhand he will be a completely different player.

In fact, for much of the opening set, FAA’s backhand looked really good. Speeds were up, and he was changing direction with more conviction.

As I tweeted several months ago, the setup of FAA’s backhand has been ever so slowly moving back into a better position compared to last year:

A wager: the closer that left elbow gets to his left kidney in the setup, and the more the racquet head gets inside the line of his hands (so the tip pointing more to the right, from this angle), the better FAA will hit his backhand. This would create a lot more length to build racquet speed.

Robbie Koenig on the FAA backhand:

“Because of the distance between the hands, I don’t think they work in sync with one another well. And because it is quite wristy, that accentuates the problem. Someone like David Ferrer, who had a similar distance between his two hands, had a much simpler stroke. Much flatter too. Wrists didn’t come into play much.”

Ferrer’s backhand was a rock. It didn’t generate a lot of spin or power, but his ability to absorb shots and time the ball well was in part due to his quiet mechanics, where the racquet head didn’t really drop beneath the ball compared to someone like FAA. This meant the racquet had a very simple “through the ball” path from the end of the drop (where the racquet tip is pointing to the back fence). YouTube Source.

There’s a pretty neat PDF by Wayne Elderton on some of this mechanics stuff that you can read here, regarding the path, angle, and speed of the racquet.

I couldn’t find a good clip with a similar angle of FAA, but Gael Monfils and Kei Nishikori are other examples of players who get a comparable amount of racquet head drop on the backhand. Look how much further under the ball Monfils’ racquet head gets compared to Ferrer.

This steepness isn’t an issue if you have the initial swing length to build the racquet head speed and swing from in-to-out.

Anyway. On a related note, Rublev himself has made adjustments to his backhand since the latter half of 2023, taking his racquet higher to create a better power position.

That change appeared to be a little muted on my viewing here in Madrid, with Rublev’s backhand at times mirroring something closer to his old 2023 AO setup.

Backhands aside, what was doing most of the damage in the first half of this match was FAA’s first serve. In fact, a huge percentage of the Canadian’s first ball weren’t even coming back into play through 6/4 2/3:

Koenig: “When Felix makes that first serve so many of them are not coming back. That’s got him out of trouble on a number of occasions. But those yellow balls, when Rublev does make a return, he’s winning 64% of the points behind Auger-Aliassime’s first serve.”

The Canadian is a bonafide “serve-plus-one” forehand player, and you can see why the serve is such a weapon, with very similar mechanics to ace machine Hubi Hurkacz (this gif is from Hurkacz’s Shanghai Masters Win last Fall):

FAA was averaging 209 km/h through the first two sets against Rublev, with a 9.0 rating on Tennis Insights for the serve.

The legs and torso are loaded and coiled before exploding up into the ball. The racquet head starts on the hitting side (right side) to create a lot of space to move the racquet in a short amount of time. You can see that FAA has his right foot further behind his left and is therefore able to coil his torso better than Hurkacz. Textbook servers.

But as Koenig mentioned, when Rublev got his teeth into rallies, he had the upper hand. Through 6/4 2/3 Rublev had enjoyed the lion’s share of points in the 5-9 shot length, winning 17/28.

And although Felix was keeping Rublev at bay on serve, his own return points won percentage had taken a significant nose-dive compared to the first set.

Rublev broke at 6-5 in the second set off the back of some aggressive returning. Gill Gross labelled Rublev’s strategy as ‘Casino returning’, noting the Russian’s frequent guesses in terms of serve direction. Because of this there were numerous instances were Rublev guessed wrong and had to uncharacteristically chip his forehand return:

If you look closely you can see Rublev’s racquet prepare for a backhand return just before Felix hits this serve, before having to adjust to the forehand with a continental grip.

On second serves especially, Rublev was able to start closer up on the baseline and apply pressure on his first shot. The standout statistic from this match: Felix finished with 14/39 second serve points won. As the match wore on, Rublev just sank his teeth into Felix’s service games over and over again. Here he managed to pull off a rare, backward falling, inside out backhand.

Felix did well to keep holding on throughout the third set; he saved four break points through to 5-6, but crucially, he wasn’t making inroads on Rublev’s serve. In fact, in the whole third set he only won 3 points on return. This was partly due to his legs failing him with cramp early in the third set, but the other reason was Rublev’s general superiority in the baseline exchanges. In the backhand to backhand matchup particularly, the Russian was the superior player.

Despite the loss, the signs are promising for FAA. The taping on the knee is gone, and the serve and forehand potency were good. The backhand, with the setup getting further back compared to last year, looked the best it has in a long time in the opening stages of this match, and for patches of this tournament (the Ruud match again). It will be interesting to see how he recovers and adapts to clay conditions that are not as serve-friendly as Madrid.

A look at the rap sheet.