CAMELOT FANTASIES

After thinking about how tough I've felt that it has been for Rafa to hold serve lately, I checked the stats.

Some might be surprised that Nadal has been a leader in some of the career serve stats.
Here are the key ones I picked out, and then compare them to this year, and separate out by surface.

T=Total Pct. R=Rank among all players, H=Hard Court Pct., G=Grass Pct., C=Clay Pct.

Rafael Nadal                       CAREER                                    2014
                                   T - R       H - R     C - R     G - R   | T - R       H - R    C - R     G - R

1st Serve Pct.                     69%-6       67%-10    71%-10     69%-8  |  71%-2      71%-2     71%-7    N/A

1st Serve won Pct.               72%-109      72%-151    70%-73   76%-106  | 71%-38     73%-35    69%-56    N/A

2nd Serve won Pct.                 57%-1        58%-1     56%-1     59%-2  |  55%-9      59%-2    51%-46    N/A

Service Games won                 86%-12       85%-17     85%-4    89%-17  | 84%-15     87%-13    81%-32    N/A

Notice that most of the 2014 stats barely differ from the career stats. 
But there is one significant difference.  Second serve won % stats on CLAY

The second serve won % differs by a whopping 5%, 56% to 51%, and his rank from #1 to #46.  5% is huge, when you consider that year by year the difference has been never more than 1%, and that the differences between players are very small, hence the rankings drop.

The service games won% reflects this stat.  It declines from 85% to 81% on clay in 2014, a 4% drop, and rank #4 to rank #32, also a large difference.

So, what does this tell us, and why, beyond that his second serve on clay isn't up to snuff?   I think that Rafa isn't getting as much action on his second serve as he usually does on the clay. 

Now one might usually say that the second serve won percentage usually reflects the ground game as much or more than the serve itself, but I think for Rafa on clay, this is not really true.  Notice his 1st serve percentages on clay are in line with his career stats, and it being clay and Rafa's serve,  I think the ground game comes into play just about as much on 1st serve as 2nd serve. Nadal doesn't get very many free serves.   So I think this discrepancy is mostly the serve.   

Now why is this happening?  One obvious answer might be the back injury.  Maybe he can't get enough spin on the ball.  For example, it requires more twisting effort to hit a kick serve, than a flat serve.  But why are his hard court stats still good? He played in Indian Wells and Miami after the back injury.  Maybe on hard courts, he hits it flatter?  Or maybe players are taking more risk against him on his second serve on clay, because the ball tends to sit up more?

So I'm going to be paying attention to this stat as Roland Garros progresses.  If he can stay near 55-56% 2nd serves won %, I think he'll be fine.  If he slips closer to 50%, then he will be in trouble, and I'm not sure it is something he can correct, if it is related to a physical problem.  Even if he says his back hasn't hurt him for awhile, I think he has been protecting the back, by not going all out.

For his sake, let's hope he is better in this respect at Roland Garros.  If not, it could be a tough road for him.

Respectfully,
masterclass