By Owen Lewis

Australian Open semifinals, 2014. Rafa Nadal leads Federer in their head-to-head 22-10 and by a set and 5-3 in the match. Serving for a two-set lead, Nadal is behind 15-30. He serves wide to the one-handed backhand of Federer, and after a few shots are exchanged Nadal begins to attack the backhand wing with vicious topspin forehands. Well-angled crosscourt strokes force Federer to return with his slice, and his tactic works as after three defensive returns Nadal drops a forehand just a little short. Federer advances on the ball and strikes a powerful crosscourt topspin backhand. The crowd oohs. Nadal, unfazed, takes the ball on the rise and belts a forehand down the line for a winner. He goes on to win the game and the match, 7-6 (4), 6-3, 6-3.

Wimbledon semifinals, 2019. Roger Federer has won five of the last six matches in the rivalry and leads by two sets to one. Nadal is serving to stay in the match at 3-5, 40-30. The point begins with Nadal hitting crosscourt forehands to Federer’s backhand, but something has changed since that semifinal five and a half years prior. Federer isn’t slicing back the returns, but instead ripping topspin backhands right back to Nadal’s forehand. Nadal thinks he’s attacking Federer’s backhand, but in reality Federer is assaulting his forehand — or at the very least, engaging in a neutral rally. It’s the Swiss who changes the tempo of the point, stepping into a backhand and swatting it down the line. Nadal’s crosscourt reply is a defensive one, and Federer pounds a forehand winner down the right sideline. He eventually wins the match 7-6 (3), 1-6, 6-3, 6-4.

So, what changed? After ten years of Nadal breaking down Federer’s backhand with topspin-packed forehands, the Swiss decided it was time for a new tactic. He beat Nadal at his home tournament, Basel, in 2015, and then brought his new gambit to Australia in 2017. Federer and Nadal met in the final (both coming back from injury and playing incredibly well, showing the tennis world for the umpteenth time why they are such legendary players — but that’s a discussion for another time), and through the first six rounds of the tournament Federer had turned his backhand into a weapon. Instead of chipping back returns and slicing backhands all over the court, he had begun to come over the top of the ball more — Rowan Ricardo Phillips puts it beautifully in The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey (I’ve said this before, but the book is absolutely brilliant and a must-read for any tennis fan): “You could see the difference in his follow-through; it was curter — the high curlicue finish of the racket with a twist of the wrist was gone…he swung the backhand now more like someone opening a stuck door.” (Page 70)

Armed with his new backhand, Federer won the first and third sets against Nadal, and when the Spaniard fought back by winning the second and fourth, and going up a break in the fifth, Federer upped the aggression on his backhand, hitting eight winners off that wing in the deciding set. His revamped one-hander was likely what made the difference in the match, bringing Federer one of his most meaningful Grand Slam titles ever.

Let’s look at the value of the topspin backhand. When Federer uses the slice, it works against almost all players (including Djokovic! It was effective in the 2019 Wimbledon Final, though Federer lost), but against Nadal, it allows the Spaniard to run around his backhand and rip his forehand to all corners of the court. One of Nadal’s favorite patterns against Federer is to attack the backhand corner, and when a weak slice presents itself, to drive a wrong-footing crosscourt winner or an inside-out forehand to the open court (and often enough, Federer misses a backhand before Nadal decides to go for the kill). But with the more aggressive topspin backhand, Federer takes some of Nadal’s time away, which prevents the Spaniard from dictating points with his forehand. When Federer hits his “neo backhand” well, Nadal’s forehand replies are often shorter in the court than normal, allowing the Swiss to attack with either wing.

Another outcome of the reconstructed backhand is the establishment of new rally patterns. Early in their careers, during Federer-Nadal matchups, Nadal would often hit ten consecutive shots to the Federer backhand, and serve to it almost all the time. In the 2009 Australian Open final, Nadal served there with such frequency that when he did change up his strategy and serve to the forehand, he often got an ace out of it because it was so unexpected. And that gambit was a lucrative one for Nadal, as Federer proved reluctant to attack second serves with his backhand, allowing Nadal to step in and break down the Swiss’s one-hander. But with the 2017 model, Federer began producing stronger backhand returns and rally shots, so that the wing no longer served as a punching bag for Nadal’s forehand. Facing deep, topspin backhands from Federer, Nadal had to adjust, angling more serves and groundstrokes to the Federer forehand. And this is massively beneficial for the Swiss. There’s a reason Nadal pummeled his backhand for so many years — it was (and still is) his weaker wing. His forehand is one of the best shots in the history of tennis, and often in playing Nadal, he just wasn’t given the opportunity to hit it as much as he wanted to. But with the backhand no longer an obvious chink in the armor of Federer’s graceful game, Nadal began serving to his forehand more often.

It’s also worth noting that Nadal’s speed and defensive ability aren’t quite what they once were. Since 2014, the Spaniard has struggled with Federer’s gambit, but in the past was able to deal with aggressive backhands from the Swiss. In the pair’s four-set duel in the semifinals of the 2012 Australian Open, Nadal absorbed a first-set loss during which Federer returned serve aggressively with his backhand, then turned the tables to win the next three sets. So Nadal has lost a bit of sharpness to his game. But much of the reason for the results of the last few meetings in the rivalry is down to Federer’s improved backhand and Nadal’s disinclination to attack more often in the baseline rallies.

As previously stated, Federer has utilized his innovated backhand to win six of the last seven meetings with Nadal, an unheard-of trend in the rivalry that Federer once trailed in 6-1 and 23-10. The head-to-head now stands at 24-16, with Nadal leading, and with Federer at 38 years old it seems extremely unlikely that the score will ever be evened. But suffice it to say that the Swiss has made an almighty push.

Questions? Leave a comment, tweet me @tennisnation or email @owenlewis11801@gmail.com. Thanks for reading!