Tinder on the backhand! So Rublev won against Nadal
Andrey Rublev celebrated his biggest win on Friday evening - one against Rafael Nadal on clay. But how did he do it?
by Florian Goosmann
last edit: Apr 18, 2021, 11:44 am
It was the big surprises in Monte Carlo this week: First the world number one Novak Djokovic lost to Dan Evans, then on Friday Rafael Nadal was kicked out against Andrey Rublev.
While Djokovic couldn't do anything with Evans' backhand slice in particular, Nadal had his own backhand problem: Because he couldn't get out of the backhand mill at all! Rublev worked the Nadal backhand mercilessly, in the end it was a deserved 6: 2, 4: 6 and 6: 2 for the 23-year-old.
These include? Compiled by data guru Craig O'Shannessy on his page braingametennis.com. Rublev then thundered his Spanish opponent a crazy 62 percent of his balls on the right third of the court - in this case, left-handers. Only Davidovich Fokina had taken it one step higher with his win over Matteo Berrettini with 65 percent. The average of "backhand nailing" in Monte Carlo, however, was 51 percent.
Rublev, however, is an expert in these tactics: Rublev is represented three times among the five matches in Monaco in which the backhand third of the court was played the most.
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Nadal hardly gets to the forehand
Nadal was not able to play his famous "serve + forehand" game too seldom. Also because his serve let him down . "Today was a day when my service let me down," he complained afterwards, saying that everything went wonderfully during training. And so Rublev often got straight to dictation.
While Nadal was able to hit 63 percent forehand and only 38 percent backhand from the baseline in his first two games against Federico Delbonis and Grigor Dimitrov, it was only 46 percent forehands (and 54 percent backhands) against Rublev.
Rublev, however, clearly dominated with 63 percent beaten forehands. Especially since he was also much closer to the baseline or in the field. Rublev had to hit only 10 percent of his strokes from more than 2 meters behind the baseline, with Nadal it was 29 percent.
O'Shannessy's conclusion: Nadal had to swallow his own medicine this time.