Cincinnati Tennis - Roger Federer uses Bill Tilden's 1930's tactics!

After watching Roger Federer tennis tournament semi-final and final matches in Cincinnati where the hard-court surface is faster then just about any other in the USA, I asked myself, 'how is it possible for anyone to lose serve today on these fast courts?

Unfortunately the answer is simple, modern day tennis players neither serve and volley enough, nor attack consistently to finish with a volley. Which validates my theory that, in the land of the blind he who can see is king! King Roger is basically observing a bunch of guys trying to find their way through tennis matches using their tennis rackets as canes for the blind (no offense meant to blind people).

And back to the tactics...tennis is just a game and Roger Federer, his predecessors and his successors are tactically limited by the dimensions and constraints of a given playing surface, the rules imposed by the ITF, ATP, other organizing bodies and what their opponents allow them to do... and here, Roger has a party that goes as far back as the 1930's to Bill Tilden's time.

Bill Tilden was a champion player of the 1920s and 1930s a strategist, who once said, 'The primary object in match tennis is to break up the other man's game. The first thought that you should have, when you step onto a court for a match, is, What are my opponent's weaknesses? Where will he miss next?'

Sure enough Roger Federer must have read that book and decided to play around with the competition in Cincinnati.

Against Andy Murray he decided to:

- Play Murray's forehand the whole match until there was not one iota of confidence left in it and Murray started making routine mistakes with it.

- Served so much to Murray's body that Murray started to question how and where to get ready for the return.

- Put so much pressure on Andy Murray's second service throughout the match to the point that Roger's efforts were crowned with a double fault from Murray at match point!

Against Djokovic he decided to:

- Play Djokovic's backhand to death or in other words until he broke it completely down to a whimper!

As a result. in important moments, whenever Djokovic managed the opportunity to hit a forehand, he missed it! (He had hit so few of them throughout the match that neither the rhythm or confidence was there!)

- Picked at Djokovic's weak second service and had Djokovic in a complete frenzy missing first serve after first serve because he was too concerned with giving Roger Federer a second serve! :-)))

- To add insult to injury he even teased a dejected Novak with drop shots (a Djokovic favourite) that bounced back higher then the net and still managed to win the point!

To cap all the pressure from Federer on Djokovic's backhand was rewarded at match point with you know what? A club level backhand mistake from Novak Djokovic!

After this display of total abuse and disrespect towards his competition by Roger Federer (smile), I can not wait to see the Roger Federer tactics applied to the US Open matches!


Sergio Cruz

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