Ground Shots Continued ...

1. Now let us take another scenario. In this case assume that we are looking at Federer and Nadal. Who do you think has the smaller miss rate. Now this time I can answer this question without any testing. Nadal has the smaller miss rate. (In fact he has a smaller miss rate than just about anybody and that is the reason why he beats everybody pretty easily except perhaps Djokovic. Without some testing I could not say who has the smaller miss rate, Djokovic or Nadal. But a prima facie guess would be Djokovic.) But Federer does use all kinds of net approaches against Nadal. Is he able to beat him. Not quite. He has lost to him more than he has one. His excellent net game is not a substiture for the consistent strong shots from the base line. But Federer has beaten Nadal in the last couple of times. But that was not becsuse of net charges. He has other tools that I do not need to discuss. But for our purposes it is enough to see that his net game did not help him beat Nadal in Madrid.

Conclusion when a rally is in progress;

The net approach is very costly and is not a fator in winning or losing a match. It is at best an auxilliary tool. Ther are other tools available to use that are safer and more profitable. Above all, a repeated use of the net approcah will leave you exhausted and light headed ( since you become more bull headed and lose track of all considerations of techmnique and control. Indeed, I think, you also lose your focus from winning to dashing to the net and usimg unnecesary force).

 

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