Will Hamilton: This past Sunday, Rodger Federer and Andy Roddick squared off in the finals of Wimbledon and they played an epic match and all-time match and Federer pulled it out 16/14 in the fifth set breaking Andy for the very first time in the match. Now to be honest I thought Federer was just going to close to his 15th Grand Slam final. I don't think he's going to be that close, he had pretty much owned Roddick in past Grand Slam matches. But Roddick did a couple of things that made the match so close and he did a couple things that almost allowed him to take the title away from Federer. First is he served the high percentage and that's always important for Roddick but it's not the whole story. He served the high percentage against Federer in the past and still got and rocked. I thought the difference in the match was how Andy moved and how he hit his backhand, both his movement and his backhand were better then they had been in the past and it allowed him to neutralize some of the things Federer did and it allowed him to stay on offense more often.
So what exactly was Andy doing differently, how was his movement helping him on his backhand side and how was his placement a little bit different because the placement of his backhand that really made the difference. Now before we go any further let me talk about these icons, there has been some confusion about them, the circle represents the player's body, the stick coming out represents the side of the body that they are hitting the tennis ball on. So this is not a tennis racquet, this is player's body and here is the stick, so for a variety this would be a backhand and this will be a forehand. So with that in mind, let's say that this is Andy Roddick and then we have Rodger Federer down here.
And because Roddick's movement in the past wasn't as good it was now and his backhand wasn't good, Federer would really exploit Roddick's backhand by mixing up the depth of his shots and the spin. This shot in particular right here, he would have a slice backhand, Roddick would struggle often to get up to it and because he wasn't always in the best position and his placement wasn't great, he would put the ball more or less in a position where Federer could attack it. Federer would typically move around this ball and hit a forehand, maybe into the open court, maybe out wide whatever but none even he will be in control at this point. What Roddick's improved movement allowed him to do was neutralize the depth and the angles that Federer hit off his backhand side. So, if Roddick was hitting a ball here, he will be only get up to it and then recover back and then maybe move back a little bit for a deeper ball and he was keeping the ball out of this area of the court on his backhand. So, in other words he was able to keep it over here, the Federer's backhand or he was able on occasion to crank it down the line and by having this shot in his arsenal, this down the line shot, Federer wasn't able to cheat over as much trying to get around to maybe an inside out or inside in forehand. So, it force Federer to be a little bit more honest. He couldn't cheat over as much because he had to worry about this shot because Roddick was hitting it so effectively and because of that most rallies stayed neutral and Roddick had more opportunities to attack.
Despite in his improved backhand and his improved moment, which allowed him to hit his backhand better, he wasn't quite able to get over the hump, he wasn't able to take out Rodger. And in my opinion, there was a particular shot that was holding Andy back. It was a shot that allowed Federer to win a lot of free points. My question to you all is what was that shot? Now my answer to this question is on our website fuzzyyellowballs.com and if you are watching this video on our website, my answer is directly below this video. If you are watching on youtube, there is a link in the description to this video that will take you to my answer but before you all watch it please post in the comments below and let me know what you think that particular shot was that held Andy back that prevented him from winning his first Wimbledon crown.
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