Rafa is among the toughest players to beat.  This is one big reason he’s number 1.

Let’s first go through his strengths to see why he’s so tough.

Everyone starts with Rafa’s tenacity, his never-say-die attitude.  This is clearly important, but if he couldn’t hit shots, it wouldn’t matter.  Rafa doesn’t play badly very often, and even when he does, his bad is often still good enough to win.

Next, Rafa is one of the best returners of the game.  He rarely gets handcuffed on serves, and so he puts a lot of balls in play.  This alone makes it tough.  Watch a match, especially with Lendl on grass, and you’ll see just how often Lendl was aced.  Part of that was dealing with serve-and-volleyers.  Lendl would step in a bit closer to give less time to the volleyer (though still far away).  Even so, Lendl was not the returner Rafa is now.

Rafa is extremely quick.  It’s hard to overpower Rafa because he uses his reverse-forehand to quickly swing.  He gets to lots of balls, and can block them back (with heavy spin).

Rafa can hit hard with heavy spin.  This spin can cause problems against players like Roger Federer because Rafa will loop it high to the Federer backhand, from where Roger can’t be aggressive.

Rafa can hit angles all over.  He can go down-the-line.  He can hit a heavy hard shot to the corner of the service box.  This pulls his opponents way out.

Rafa works hard to put you on the defense.  If you don’t play aggressive enough against Rafa, he will start pushing you out wide, then yank you side to side until you hit a short ball, and then he’ll hit a winner.  Rafa does this better than anyone.

Rafa makes very few unforced errors.  Rafa serves a high first-serve percentage.

Finally, Rafa hits amazing shots when he’s under pressure.  If you attack him at net, he is able to thread the needle and get amazing shots past you.

Weaknesses

So how can Rafa be beat?  Rafa does have a few weaknesses.

If you catch Rafa after he’s had a long break, he is often a bit rusty and missing shots.  That increase in error can give you chances on his serve.

If Rafa is nervous, he stops going after his shots and is content to spin the ball.  He’ll still pounce when he can, but if you play aggressive against him, he will often go into counterpuncher mode, waiting for errors.

Rafa stands way back.  He’s been doing better about getting closer to the baseline, but standing that far back allows you to hit angle shots and pull him way off court.  Normally, this doesn’t affect Rafa much because he’s so quick.

Rafa doesn’t have the best second serve in the world.  It’s very good, but it is attackable.  However, few players have second serves that are easily attacked.  As weak as Murray’s second serve is, his opponents don’t usually tee off on returns for winners.  You used to see return winners a bit more often in the late 80s and 90s, but it seems rarer on the men’s tour.

Strategies that work against Rafa

Let’s look at players that have had some success against Rafa.  Rafa still has a winning record against most of these players, but they’ve had success.

Novak Djokovic is a player who generally plays his normal style.  He moves the ball around, looking for an opening then goes for a big down-the-line shot.  It’s also hard to be aggressive against him these days because he moves pretty quick and can hit a hard shot back.  He’s one of the few players that keeps even with Rafa, and pressures his second serve.  Djokovic has one of the best returns in the game, and that keeps him in many of Rafa’s service games.

Roger Federer generally has a tough time beating Rafa.  During the World Tour Final in 2010, Roger just went for big shots all the time.  He was helped by the relatively fast surface with a low bounce, and so Rafa couldn’t spin the ball as high as he is used to.  And, he was helped that Murray kept Rafa on the court several hours in their semifinal match while Federer had a relatively easy win over Djokovic.

Federer relies on his serve to give Rafa some trouble.  If Rafa is returning it (as he did in Miami, by simply moving further out wide in the deuce court), Federer is in trouble.  Roger is also hampered by making too many errors if he has to go after big shots too often.  Federer doesn’t have a very high shot tolerance.  In the good old days, Roger could go 20 shots, but he wants to be done in 10 shots, usually.

Nikolay Davydenko had an interesting strategy against Rafa.  Davydenko plays close to the baseline.  He is very precise hitting every direction.  Up the middle, down-the-line, and sharp angled crosscourt off both wings.  If Davydenko gets Nadal off the court with an angle, he can then hit down-the-line for a winner.  When Davydenko was playing well, his serve was getting him some free points.  This also helped him keep even with Rafa.  Davydenko played, in my opinion, the best match of the year against Rafa in the 2010 Doha final.  Both were striking the ball very well.

Unfortunately, a few months later, Davydenko broke his wrist (left).  When he came back, he wasn’t the same player, and now he loses early all the time.  It’s kind of a sad result.

Juan Martin del Potro uses a power ploy.  He has a huge serve and the biggest forehand in the game.  He moves well for a big guy, but it’s his ability to hit that huge forehand that gives Nadal trouble.  Few players can overpower Nadal, but del Potro, in his prime, can.   Right now, we’re still waiting for del Potro to get his game back.  He’s probably 80% there, which is amazingly good.

Andy Murray has a Rafa strategy.  He basically hits everything very hard.  He has a hard backhand crosscourt.  He can hit the forehand to either corner, and he has a short crosscourt spin shot and a high looping spinner that he uses to attack the Rafa backhand.  He also returns the serve really well.

The other players that have beaten Rafa have generally played aggressive with Rafa not being on top of his game.  Usually, they’ve held serve because they have a big serve, and make Rafa work on his own.  These include players like Andy Roddick and Ivan Ljubicic.

Right now, there’s no “Pete Sampras/Agassi” hybrid, that is, a guy who aces nearly as often as Karlovic, but has good movement and can rally with Rafa.  Such a player would hold serve quite often and pressure Rafa on his own return.  But these days, none of the best players in the world have a huge serve that is their primary weapon.  It was perhaps the weapon for Sampras (or his forehand).

I suppose someone might come around that hits harder than Rafa but is also very accurate and runs down shots, but that person hasn’t arrived yet.  Rafa made a splash very quickly in his career.    Rafa relies so much on speed, one wonders if he can keep it up.  However, Rafa’s been less injured (as far as we can tell) than in recent past.  Discussion of how long his body will hold up appear to have disappeared.

In general, it helps to beat Rafa if Rafa isn’t playing his best.  Perhaps that’s how most players play, but when Rafa is on, it’s really hard to keep up.