DarthFed said:
1972Murat said:
Darth, I do believe Nadal made Roger work harder and made him improve on certain things and those things helped him against other players, just not Nadal...
I'd be interested to hear your take on it. To my mind Roger tried to change his game a lot on clay and added the dropshot in his arsenal and it is a very good dropshot at that. But aside from that Rafa sucked up Roger's confidence (always an enormous thing in tennis) and the changes he made to try to get over the hump on clay may have hurt him on other surfaces.
One thing I can say with confidence is the fitness thing. Putting the last 2-3 years aside, Roger was one of the fittest guy out there and his movement was easily the best. Guys like Novak and Murray were holding their knees trying to catch a breath after long rallies, Roger was just waiting on the service line, ready to get going. I think Roger realized he had to be as fit as Rafa to beat him. Not always worked against Rafa, but surely worked against most of the field.
The backhand...not that it was not a solid shot, but I think he worked on it enough that it became a huge weapon for him. It was not enough to counter the high bouncing Rafa forehand, but he became really good at dealing with those balls and nobody else could exploit it. These days people say it is a weakness to exploit but I totally disagree. His weakness is not the shot, it is getting there to hit it properly.
Like you said, the dropper. It might be a direct result of Rafa playing from a different area code. I am not sure, but I think Rafa has something to do with Roger embracing a shot that he pretty much ridiculed before.
I agree with the confidence issue though, that some of his losses to Rafa came at bad times but he really managed it as best as he could and took it out of everyone else. Sure he could have done without them, but hey...
