Let’s start with the top seed and work our way down.

Rafael Nadal

Rafa’s level generally never drops too low.  Everyone points to how he never gives up, and while that’s certainly one factor in his incredible ability to win, everyone says that about Lleyton Hewitt, and he’s struggling to get in the top 20.  The fact of the matter is that Nadal’s groundies are about half a level better than everyone.  He gets to more balls, can do more things with it, than practically anyone else.

Consider one of Rafa’s favorite shots.  You are hitting a nice standard crosscourt shot.  The ball lands somewhere on Rafa’s deuce court halfway between the center line and the sideline.  Now that’ a good solid neutral shot.

But Rafa will step to his right, hit a hook forehand inside-in, and sometimes even aim the ball as short as the service line, with pace.  That ball curls away and you can barely reach it.  Just ask Andy Roddick.  Rafa does better with apparently neutral shots like this than anyone.  What’s worse for the rest of the field is he’s going for these shots more.  In the past, Rafa was so scared of making errors, that he preferred to spin shots up the middle and wait for your error.

How’s Rafa hitting?  Well, as expected, he was a bit rusty against Roddick.  It’s hard to say how he was playing against Djokovic.  That eye problem really seemed to throw Djokovic off.  It seems like Rafa is playing well, but not super.  Which means good enough to beat most of the rest of the field.  Recall Wimbledon when Rafa struggled with two five-setters, found his rhythm, and won the big W.

Roger Federer

On the other hand, I think Roger is playing pretty good.  With his subpar results at the French and Wimbledon and even his shock loss to Djokovic, I feel Roger wants to make a statement that he’s still around and he’s still playing good tennis.

At the beginning of the year, when Roger won the Australian Open, I felt he had stepped it up a notch with his backhand.  He was starting to hit winners with it when before (at least in the last 2-3 years), he seemed content to just use it as a neutral shot.  I thought a bigger backhand would let him run around his forehand less, which requires a substantial amount of athleticism.  Roger has, to his credit, kept his body in great shape, no doubt due to an excellent physio that tells him when he needs to skip tournaments to recover.

Roger didn’t play much until Indian Wells.  By then, his game seemed to have regressed back to last year’s play and that great backhand wasn’t so great anymore.  He was back to shanking balls and so forth.  I think, much like Borg, Roger’s quick strokes just seem susceptible to mishits.  Either that, or he practices a fraction of what Rafa does to preserve his body, and his immense talent mostly compensates.  Roger seems to point to issues with his back and legs to preventing him from playing his best tennis.  You don’t see it in obvious ways, but Roger certainly played a lot better with the rest he took after Wimbledon.

Roger easily handled David Ferrer and then manhandled Andy Murray.  The fact is, other than Andy Murray, the other two players: Ferrer and Soderling, are guys Roger routinely beats.  Soderling should give Roger trouble, but Roger is smart enough to use Soderling’s lack of real speed against him.  What was surprising was how poorly Murray played, but Roger was also striking the ball well.  Watch how Murray struggles to reach some of the balls Roger is hitting.

There’s almost a Nadal-esque quality.  Nadal has often preferred hitting the shot you barely reach while Roger hits a winner.  The Nadal shot is almost more humiliating.  With a winner, you can at least say “too good”.  With a near-winner, you are getting to the ball, but Nadal has robbed you of so much time, that you can’t hit a good aggressive shot.  So you do the best you can, but it still floats a little, and Nadal hits another near-winner, and you struggle.  Pretty soon, barely able to reach another shot, you pop up something too slow, and he whips it for a winner.  Roger did a little of that to Murray.  Maybe Murray was ailing in some way (you can often ascribe poor play to injury, but the pros rarely like to discuss it because it seems like whining), but regardless, Roger had Murray struggling to reach shots.

To me, Roger is playing his best tennis in a long time.  Is it good enough to beat Rafa?  That’s the million dollar question.  I think we won’t know until they potentially face each other in the finals.

Novak Djokovic

Djokovic invariably plays well after the US Open.  After Rafa and Roger, the most versatile player on tour is Novak Djokovic.  For a long time, I couldn’t figure out why.  Djokovic lacks the pure power of a Soderling or del Potro.  He isn’t the huge risk taker that Federer is.  He doesn’t have the huge topspin of Nadal that knocks you on his heels.

However, Djokovic is very fast (not Nadal fast, but fast enough) and he can move the ball around very well.  And he hits a certain shot so well that one has to say it’s critical for every top player to be able to hit it reliably.

When Ivan Lendl was at the top of his game, he introduced the idea of hitting winners from the baseline.  In the old days, you couldn’t get that much power from a small racquet, but Lendl had a somewhat small graphite racquet, and he challenged this preconception.  While he hits far fewer winners than today’s pros (often, he would be content getting into ultra-long rallies and winning by waiting for an error), it was a sight to behold when he would go for a shot.  Lendl’s big shots were the down-the-line forehand and backhand.

By and large, the down-the-line shot has become something of a lost art.  The rule of thumb is, if you’re pulled wide, hit a big crosscourt shot.  This is the safer shot.  But as pros do this more and more, they have become afraid of hitting the down-the-line shot.  A handful of players will do it.  Davydenko, at his best, can hit every angle, down-the-line, sharp crosscourt, you name it.  And his down-the-line shots was often the two, in his one-two arsernal with one being a sharp crosscourt.  When he’d get a medium crosscourt back, he’d take it early, and hit it down the line.  Soderling will do it, but he’s not nearly as good as the other players.  Berdych also tries it, but his timing has to be on for it to work.

Djokovic is as accurate down-the-line off both sides as anyone.  Indeed, if there’s one thing that separates Djokovic’s backhand from Murray’s, it’s that Murray really likes crosscourt.  Only recently (this year) has Murray tried to get his down-the-line shot working again.  It is such a critical shot to hit well all the time.  True, it’s low percentage, but the best players increase the odds by hitting it well.

Even so, Djokovic still has problems playing Federer and Nadal.  Federer takes such huge chances that Djokovic isn’t afforded the time to set up as he’d like to.  And occasionally, Djokovic will play a poor game where the shots don’t land.  Federer probably feels he has the edge mentally, and the same can be said of Nadal.

And one has to wonder whether Djokovic is not already thinking ahead to the Davis Cup.  A win for Serbia would be huge, and Djokovic needs to be at his best considering both France and Serbia suddenly have “hot” players.  All four likely singles players (Monfils, Llodra, Djokovic, Troicki) have had great post-US Open runs, especially Monfils and Llodra at Paris.  With his eye bother him (it should be fine against Roddick), does Djokovic really want to qualify for the semifinals?  It’s good for his ranking, but will he wear himself out for the tie in about a week’s time?

Overall, Djokovic playing solid, just not as well as Federer/Nadal.  Solid for Djokovic is actually pretty good for Djokovic.

Robin Soderling

With Robin’s win in Paris, he moved ahead of Andy Murray in the rankings.  Everyone said “watch out for this guy, he might make some noise in Paris”.  Last year, Soderling was the big surprise.  He would begin with a defeat of Rafael Nadal, and we’d see something you almost never see.  Rafa losing all his round robin matches in straight sets.  To be fair, Djokovic, Soderling, and Davydenko had beaten Rafa that year, but it was a bit surprising for Soderling to do it again.  Soderling won that group, but eventually lost to del Potro in the semifinals.

Robin started by playing the other “hot” player in Andy Murray.  But while Robin Soderling’s big wins in Paris were over Monfils and Roddick, Andy Murray could point to his win over Roger Federer in Shanghai as a resume builder.  Murray was able to play his brand of tennis and given the Scot’s versatility and brains and Soderling’s generally one-dimensional (though effective) style of play, Soderling went down.  It didn’t help that Soderling didn’t serve particularly well.

He just squeaked by David Ferrer who is the shortest player in the field.  Ferrer has to do different things to win, because he lacks Soderling’s power.  He generally uses his speed, his ability to move the ball around, and hit inside-out shots to the backhand.  But Ferrer’s a bit of a lightweight compared to the heavyweights.

Soderling is playing solid.  Not as good as the French Open.  However, he’s likely to lose to Federer.  Again.

Andy Murray

He had a very solid match against Robin Soderling who had few answers.  But then, he tossed in a poor match, mostly due to poor serving.  Federer had Murray running ragged, and was able to pressure him on his second serve.  Murray will have an occasional bad patch.  This year, especially.  When Murray’s played well, he’s looked fantastic as he did in Toronto (especially Toronto–where he beat Rafa and Roger back to back) and Shanghai.  Murray, like Rafa, is learning to play more aggressive, and not use steadiness and change of pace to win as much.  He’s cut down on how much he slices on the backhand and is trying to get winners more off his backhand.

But he has days when those shots aren’t working well, and then he often loses, as he did against Federer.  So I’d say he’s perhaps a bit better than Soderling in terms of how well he’s playing.

Tomas Berdych

Of all the players coming in, Berdych was playing the worst tennis.  He had lost in the opening round several times, including, alas, the US Open to Michael Llodra, who barely missed getting a seed.  Berdych’s flat style means he has little margin for error.  When he’s hitting well, the ball flies effortlessly, but his shot tolerance isn’t that high and he has to take higher risk shots to win.

He started off meh against Andy Roddick, but at least two things helped.  First, he was getting back a lot of Roddick’s serves.  This is quite a feat considering how few Rafa got back.  Second, he was managing to hold his own serve.  Once Berdych held his own serve after being down 15-40, a light switch went on and he appeared to get back those shots that brought him to the Wimbledon finals.

The problem?  Can he beat Rafa?  Soderling couldn’t do it against Rafa at the French Open even though he was hitting the ball ultra-huge.  Rafa just spun the ball high and deep and bought himself time.  When Soderling couldn’t hit through Rafa, he started to miss, and that was all she wrote.  Berdych doesn’t have that consistent bludgeoning power.  Berdych needs to serve well and hope that Rafa isn’t striking the ball particularly well.  And it would help to make volleys.  Right now, I don’t see it.  But it’s good to see Tomas starting to play better.  Hopefully his elevated confidence will lead to something.

David Ferrer

Much like Lleyton Hewitt, Ferrer is the little guy who could.  Everyone knows he fights as hard as anyone, but he has no choice.  He’s the ultimate overachiever.  He lacks a huge serve.  He can’t hit winners at will.  You can overpower him.  But if he’s on, he runs down lots of shots, and he can attack with his inside-out forehand.   I guess Ferrer is playing decent for Ferrer, but even a superb Ferrer can’t beat the very best.

At least Ferrer can say he’s beaten Murray 3 times, although each time it was on clay.

Andy Roddick

In a way, Roddick may have the least talent of anyone in the field.  He relies on his serve, and surprisingly, his brain.  Roddick, more than anyone not named Murray, has been willing to learn new shots and add them to his repetoire.  He just never learns it well enough to be very good at it.  He’s learned to attack, relearned how to hit a big forehand, has a good slice, hits a big looper, has OK touch.  It’s enough to beat lower ranked players, but it’s often not enough for others.

Roddick threw a change up against Rafa and was up a set, but it probably had more to do with Rafa being rusty than Roddick being great tactically.  You have to hand it to the best players in the world.  They handle variety amazingly well.  Roddick is probably wishing he was born 10 years earlier where half his mad-scientist ideas might actually have worked.

And he really caught Berdych at a bad time.  Berdych probably knew this was his best chance to play good tennis again, and when he held his serve down set points, all of a sudden his strokes began to flow.  I thought Roddick would win because, talented as Berdych is, he often lacks the tenacious attitude.  Berdych just seems way too laid-back.  And a flat hitting style needs good timing.  Sometimes Berdych has the timing, and it looks great.  Other times he doesn’t, and he’s dumping the ball in the net or going wide.

Roddick will at least point to his steady play.  He’s been getting to the final 8 for some number of years.  And despite his 0-2 start, he’s still theoretically in the tournament, though a lot of improbable things would have to happen.  Well, not so improbable.  He needs Rafa to beat Berdych (likely) and he needs to beat Djokovic (possible).