Will Hamilton: It's Saturday, June 13th. I want to introduce FYB's newest to our tennis court, which we're going to use to diagram plays, talk about strategy. You could see I can draw all over the court and let's talk about the recap of the French Open.
Last Saturday, Roger Federer beat Robin Soderling in the Final the French Open, its Federer's first French Open title. He has now got the career Grand Slam. I didn't think the match was particularly interesting; it was basically a beat down for a lack of a better term. Federer played great; he was plus 17 on winner sort of 66% on his first serve. Soderling played all right, but he just wasn't a match for Federer. The one thing that was different with Soderling's earlier match is something Federer did, which he said in the press conference that I think it was real effective was. Federer talked about; let's say Soderling is down here.
I just put an S for Soderling. His previous opponents particularly Nadal or the other guys would hang out pretty far behind the baseline, maybe somewhere in here when they were playing Soderling. Particularly with Nadal, he was far behind the baseline and he was dropping his ground strokes, real short and then they were kicking up right in the Soderling's real hours and of course, Soderling had no problem going to the corners, running Nadal all over the place and obviously Soderling won that match.
Gonzalez and David Engel were pretty far behind the baseline as well. But Federer and -- Federer always does, as he stands closer to the baseline, sometimes right on the baseline. So, Soderling wasn't able to dictate play, I'd like he did against those other guys. Obviously, Federer dictated play because he won in straight sets. So that was an --- not really an adjustment that Federer made, but that was why Federer was able to take it to Soderling unlike some other guys that Soderling played in the previous rounds. The other thing I want to talk about is Federer's use of the drop shot. It's a shot that he hasn't really used in the past not only on clay, but other surfaces and he incorporated that with great success into his game this past French Open.
I want to talk about a few points related to how he used in the drop shot and his drop shot technique. Now Mary Carillo made a great point about Fed's drop shot technique. Federer's forehand grip, as we've explained in another video is an Eastern and with that conservative grip, it's real easy for him slide maybe a bevel or so that we half a bevel over and get to a grip that he can use to in a -- two effectively hit a drop shot. And that's an advantage over some other guys, which have more extreme grips and then you have to move your grip a lot more to get you an appropriate grip that this guys hasn't quite there.
So that's one technical advantage Federer has with his conservative grip. Also, Federer was really smart about when he use his shot -- his drop shot was great, I mean the ball would bounce a bunch of times before it got to the service line. But that was when he chose to use his drop shot that really set that point apart. Now, famously you could say Federer drop shotted on a Jose acasuso second serve a couple of times. Why is actually is he drop shotting on a second serve? Well, when most prose hitters second serve when they land they are a little bit inside the baseline. Let's say they're right about here. Well, this is not a comfortable position from which to hit groundstroke, so players are going to retreat to their natural ground stroke depth. So they're moving backwards in other words. So, if acasuso serves as the ball is traveling to the air, he is moving back and then if Federer hits that drop shot acasuso has to stop and then close on the ball, so he has to change his direction and it has to get to the ball when you're paddling and then he had the stop and split all the way to the net.
So, Federer was real smart about understanding what direction his opponents were moving, when he use the drop shot. He would also do it if his opponent were hit now at here and recovering back to the middle or even recovering back a little bit. He would hit the drop shot over here, so they'll have to stop and then close to get to the ball. Again, that's stop, I mean like Soderling for example, didn't even run for some of those balls because he was moving in the wrong direction, he got wrong footed. So, he really didn't have a chance to close to get to the ball.
There is one final point I want to make about Federer's use to the drop shot because those are interesting to watch where Federer position themselves, after he hit the shot. Let's see Fed's right here and he gets a forehand drop shot and he put it's over here somewhere; his opponent obviously closes on the ball. Well, Federer is also going to close. He will go from right here and he know me would move about to here to somewhere in No Man's Land because what he was trying to do was cover most of his basis. He wanted to cover and says his opponent makes contact with the ball here and to cover down the line.
He wanted to cover a cross court, but he also wanted to cover the angle drop shot to the open Court. So, by positioning itself here, he was able to cover most of the spots his opponents could put the ball. I'd also like to add that we would love to hear your comments, so please post them below. This is the first time we've used the white board and we're interesting to hear your feedback, so let us know we absolutely will be analyzing Wimbledon with this thing will be talking about previous matches, we'll talking about upcoming matches, but there is a bunch of ways we can use this. So, again leave us a comment let's us know what you think.
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