Greatness in Simplicity
Djokovic's quick return to form—technique dictates tactic—control over power
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions. [...] It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. [...] You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.”—Steve Jobs
It’s been interesting to watch Djokovic play his way back into form over the course of the clay season in recent weeks. His matches in Rome were a far cry from his initial stutter in Monte Carlo, and he is my strong favourite to win the French despite a tough draw. As I have touched on in previous posts about forehands and backhands, great performance has a signal that can be traced back to the technical and physical domains that give players greater control. There is something inevitable about the Big-3 and how quickly they always bounce back from absences; like riding a bicycle, or remembering the lyrics of a long-forgotten song from childhood, they catch the thread of excellence quickly and rarely lose it. Their domination of Rome—the final litmus test before Roland Garros each year—is a testament to this.
Craig O’Shannessy, an ATP coach who uses data to inform player strategy at Brain Game Tennis, has been posting endless loops of some great shots in the build-up to Roland Garros. Here are a few of Djokovic.
There’s so much to love in how Djokovic hits his groundstrokes. He creates power from heaven and earth; the legs push up and the racquet falls down, and everything gets channeled into an effortless uncoiling.
If there have been ‘elegant solutions’ to modern tennis, it has been embodied by the Big-3 in their own way:
Federer was instinctively a ruthless technical editor who reduced his game to the bare essentials: conservative grips, extended wrist, short swings, one ball toss, eyes ever on the ball.
Nadal’s crosscourt buggy-whip forehand into the right-handed backhand has been an elegant solution for decades. On clay it is a sledgehammer applied to fine china.
Djokovic’s groundstrokes have the consistency and smooth timing of a revolving door, able to absorb and redirect shots with depth and pace. He is the casino, you’re just playing in it.
All top players have weapons. What matters more these days is not having a weakness. In a previous article on Rublev’s game, I made the comparison of tennis to poker. An excerpt from that piece:
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. 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. Djokovic going into the Rublev backhand would be a great percentage play for Djokovic because his backhand is akin to pocket aces, whereas Rublev has a little less margin and dynamism on that side, in part due to his shorter, wristier swing. For a proxy to the Rublev backhand, check out the Alcaraz v Djokovic backhand analysis here. As the video states (~5:25), can Alcaraz (and Rublev) 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.” The percentages are going to ever so slightly favour Djokovic, and it might not really pay off until the pressure rises, perhaps in a tie-breaker or fifth set, but when it does, these costs are amplified. The screams of frustration that bubble over after missing the backhand may convey a mental breakdown, but the origins of these ‘mental collapses’ are often baked into the technique.
If we think about some of the younger players and what they must do to overthrow Djokovic and Nadal, it is more often a case of patching a weakness rather than developing a weapon1. For a crude visual, imagine that each player’s groundstrokes have a window that most of their performances can fall within (staying with our poker analogy, I’m using a card deck). The four favorites for Roland Garros—Djokovic, Nadal, Alcaraz, and Tsitsipas—can play great off both wings. But what separates them is how weak the shot can be. Tsitsipas is capable of having a great day on the backhand, but it can also be broken down due to his lack of defensive capabilities on that side (on return and when slicing); Rafa can turn Tsitsipas’ backhand King into a 9 with his forehand.
By contrast, Djokovic really doesn’t have any real weakness. His forehand earlier in his career was a little looser, but he’s improved that. An excerpt from a piece I wrote on the two-handed backhand:
“…perhaps not surprising that the Djokovic backhand has been rock-solid throughout his career. No surface, opponent, or situation has been able to break it; he has weathered the Nadal forehand at Roland Garros and the Federer forehand at Wimbledon. He can melt flat winners down the line, block first serves ad nauseum, or roll passing shots cross court at full-stretch.”
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.
To make a cross-sport comparison with another supremely accurate player in golf, I can’t help but notice the similarities in the set wrist positions on take-back and the maintenance of them through contact in Colin Morikawa’s golf swing. Morikawa gets great ‘compression’ on the golf ball by hitting down on the shot with minimal wrist action. My hunch is that great timing and ball flight in tennis is assisted by the same principles but in reverse. An extended wrist promotes trunk rotation and the willingness to hit through the ball as the racquet head will be quieter on either side of the contact zone.2 The video below talks about the backhand/golf swing similarities with Mardy Fish, who had an excellent two-handed backhand as a right-handed tennis player, and is a pretty handy golfer with a lefty swing.
Control breeds confidence. It’s what makes a player genuinely ‘want’ to attack the ball; the feet and preparation speed up on their own accord. The body knows you need things happening faster in the legs and trunk. It’s why polyester string has become ubiquitous on professional tours, they are low-powered and therefore promote faster swings that enhance topspin, the enhanced topspin creates more control which further emboldens a player to swing faster.
I’ll leave you with a few videos of the Big-3’s forehands. Given that each of their forehands has undergone iterations with minor technical changes in the set-up, the ones shown below are from a period close to their peak Elo-rating. Especially in Rafa’s case, note the extended wrist throughout his 2013 swing that he doesn’t use as much in 2022.
Medvedev may be the exception. His forehand is consistent, but lacks a killer blow that probably cost him the Australian Open this year.
Important to remember that hitting ‘through’ a shot is a ‘feel’. What we really do is hit in a circular arc.