If you could boil down the US Open 2009 into one shot, one singular feat, it would have to be Roger Federer’s tweener against Novak Djokovic in the semifinals of the US Open.
This is how it went down. Djokovic is down 0-30. If he loses his serve, Federer will win the match. Djokovic hits a serve up the middle. Roger slices it up the middle deep. Djokovic peddles to his left and back and hits a big inside-out shot. Roger moves to his left and barely slices a ball to the middle of the court. Djokovic decides to drop-shot and come to net. Federer pushes the ball up the line. Djokovic lob volleys. Federer runs back and hits the tweener crosscourt to Djokovic’s forehand side. It lands cleanly and Federer jumps in glee. The announcers are stunned at how good the shot is.
On a day that saw Federer playing Argentine, Brian Dabul, a guy that had never played in the main draw of the US Open, Federer was exuding confidence, hitting many more winners and aces than his opponent who, nonetheless, was able, like many top players, to stay in some rallies and hit with the best of them.
Dabul is down 5-3 in the second set after Federer has taken the first set 6-2. However, it is his ad, and he is serving to hold. Dabul swings a lefty serve out wide. Federer drives a backhand crosscourt on his return. Dabul goes up the line (but not too close) on his forehand. Federer hits the shot back up the line. Dabul goes crosscourt again. Federer hits a sharp angle backhand to Dabul’s forehand side. Dabul response with another sharp forehand angle.
Federer goes for another crosscourt backhand, this time closer to the T. Dabul hits his crosscourt lefty forehand to Federer’s backhand, but Fed had run around it, and hit a slice forehand inside-in to Dabul’s backhand. Dabul moves to his right, tosses a high lob, the only shot he can hit. He is well-wide of the deuce sidelines and is returning back to the center of the court after the lob goes over his head.
Fed chases it down and hits the tweener close to the back wall and hits it towards the sideline that Dabul just ran away from (since Dabul was getting centered). Dabul smiles as the shot goes past. Federer also smiles and raises his arm, then quickly pulls it down in a motion similar to Robin Soderling when he pulled the impossible feat and beat Nadal at the French.
Overall, Federer was moving well and hitting hard. He’s back to using his backhand more and hitting it with more velocity. He’s moving well. Yes, he still makes inexplicable errors, but now he’s not shanking as much. He just misses long or wide or in the net, which is how most players tend to miss it. This Federer is striking the ball quite well. The downside, such as it is, is that Federer is still relatively impatient. He is trying for big shots, trying to end points early, and he’d rather win the point than watch his opponent lose it. That lack of patience often means he makes more errors than he should.
Federer’s genius has been to make these big shots more often than he doesn’t, to space out the errors. But as far as clean hitting goes, he’s hitting as clean as I’ve seen, perhaps better than the Australian Open. You can tell when Roger is doing well when he slices less and drives his backhand more. When he trusts his backhand enough not to run around it, then he’s flowing with great confidence.
To be fair, Dabul is the kind of opponent that Roger can get grooved on. Although Dabul moves the ball around pretty well, and isn’t completely intimidated by Roger’s power, he himself isn’t a power hitter. He hit four winners, and hardly any aces. Dabul simply doesn’t scare Roger and when Roger’s confidence flows.
Roger now faces another lefty in Andreas Beck. Beck’s ranking has slipped to 104, but he was as high as 33 in the world. Presumably, Beck will be more aggressive. In any case, Roger has to feel that getting two lefties in a row is a blessing if he has to play Rafa in the finals.
If Roger wins, then he plays a Frenchman in the third round. It will either be Paul-Henri Mathieu or Guillaume Rufin. Paul-Henri Mathieu upset Hewitt in 5 sets. Mathieu can be difficult, but his ranking has slipped as his other Frenchman claimed higher rankings. Rufin is 20, and is one of the younger competitors out there. He was a wildcard in a deal that the US Open, the French Open, and the Australian Open have where they give the other two countries one wildcard each of their choice. Rufin apparently was the French choice so the French must see some potential in this guy. And with that wildcard, he beat Leonardo Mayer of Argentina in four sets, winning two tiebreaks. This match of the Frenchmen could be interesting with a tour veteran meeting the young upstart.
But I digress.
Was this tweener better than last year’s? In my opinion, yes. Sure, last year’s was on a bigger stage. It was in the semifinals. Djokovic went down 0-40 on that point and eventually lost the match when he got broken. Meanwhile, Dabul was serving his ad in the game and although there was a minor struggle, Dabul held his serve (not that it mattered, since Dabul was already down a break by this point, and would go on to lose the second set).
Djokovic hit a delicate lob-volley which Fed reached just behind the baseline. Djokovic was already at net, and it’s easier to pass someone at net than at the baseline where you have time to react and move. By contrast, Dabul’s lob was more of a real (though desperation) lob. Federer reached the ball much deeper (near the back wall) and Dabul was at the baseline, meaning he had, in theory, more time to chase the ball down. To be fair, Dabul had, on the previous Fed inside-in slice, been pulled way off court to his right, and Dabul was running to his left to cover the center of the court. Fed played the shot “behind” Dabul, perhaps all the more impressive given Fed’s court sense that he could “aim” there (to be fair, it was the same spot he aimed for against Djokovic). Fed hits that shot so well that you feel he’s practiced this a tremendous number of times and knows how hard and where to aim to make the shot spectacular.
So, as far as tweeners go, this is a better shot than last year’s shot. There are other shots that may be more technically difficult (Monfils has hit a passing shot with his entire body in the air), but few that are so showoff-y and few that scare men as much as the tweener. Until Roger Federer hit last year’s tweener (he has tried it before, but in less illustrious situations), the most famous tweener was by Yannick Noah in 1983 when he hit a tweener against Aaron Krickstein in the fourth round. Krickstein actually got a racquet on it (he volleyed it) and Noah hit a passing shot to win the point.
So kudos to Roger who shows that only he should try this shot. After all, he is a professional.
