How to make Novak Djokovic miss a return
Novak Djokovic is arguably the best returner of all time. How well did his opponents have to serve at this year's Australian Open to prevent the Serb from getting the ball back into play?
Novak Djokovic has got one of the greatest returns of serve of all time.
His return games winning percentage of 32.05% is the third-highest among his peers (third to Rafael Nadal and Diego Schwartzman).
On a hardcourt, his return games winning percentage is identical but it is the highest among his peers. At the Australian Open, this winning percentage rises to 35.21%.
How well would a player have to serve to hit the ball once and win the point against the great returner at the Australian Open, his most comfortable tournament?
“Well” is a pretty loose word so let me define it. I’ll be looking at how fast and where his opponents served at this year’s Australian Open to either hit an outright ace or force a return error from Djokovic’s racket.
How well did Djokovic return in his Australian Open title run?
For all his returning accolades, Djokovic didn’t return quite as well as you would expect at the Australian Open.
He won 29.6% of the return games he played. This was 14th-best in the draw and is Djokovic’s lowest return games won percentage at the Australian Open since 2013 (29.51%).
Djokovic’s seven victims were Taylor-made to cause him trouble with their huge serves. In particular, Taylor Fritz, Milos Raonic and Alexander Zverev are known for having some of the most powerful serves on tour, but Daniil Medvedev and Frances Tiafoe can also regularly eclipse 130mph. Somehow though, Djokovic still managed to make 55.2% of his returns.
The other 44.8%? The other 244 serves that flew passed Djokovic or forced him into missing the return? They’re the points we’re going to take a look at.
The target areas of the service box
First, I’ll explain a bit of the lingo I’m going to be using.
There are two service boxes a player can serve into and these two boxes are split into three sections.
You can either serve from the right-hand side of the court into the deuce box or you can serve from the left-hand side into the advantage box.
These two service boxes are then split into three target areas: wide, body or (down the) T.
Conveniently, all of Djokovic’s opponents at the 2021 Australian Open were right-handed. A left-handed player would likely skew my carefully constructed numbers with a slow but effective wicked slice serve to the advantage wide area. Damn lefties.
With that out the way, let’s look at how often Djokovic failed to make a return from each of these target areas.
The number of unreturned serves
Notice I have lumped aces and forced errors into the same bracket. They can be regarded as the same thing in this context - in both situations, Novak does not get the ball back into play and he had no control over this outcome. Unforced errors are not really relevant to the discussion as they have no bearing on an effective serve1.
I have left out three sets from the tournament. Djokovic was a completely different player in his final three sets against Taylor Fritz. He sustained a muscle tear in the third set and, following this, Fritz was able to draw a return error from Djokovic’s forehand with relative ease2.
At first glance, it was easier to hit an effective serve to Djokovic’s forehand. Servers forced an error or hit an ace to Djokovic’s forehand 95 times. When serving to Djokovic’s backhand, the Serb failed to make a return 82 times.
Djokovic’s forehand return is worse than his backhand return, job’s a goodun… right?
WRONG!
We need to look at how often Djokovic failed to make a return from each section of the court within the context of the total serves directed to each section of the court.
The percentage of unreturned serves
Starting to get a little complicated? I’ll keep it simple.
Djokovic failed to return the ball when the serve was directed down the deuce court T or out wide in the ad court (to Djokovic’s backhand) 29.4% of the time.
When the ball was directed out wide in the deuce court or down the T in the ad court (to Djokovic’s forehand), Djokovic failed to make a return 37.5% of the time.
Djokovic successfully made a return on his backhand on 8.1% more occasions than on his forehand.
The speed of unreturned serves
There’s even more to it than this though.
Take a look at the average speed required to force an error or hit an ace from each section of the court.
If you’re going to serve into the body of Djokovic, make sure the serve carries plenty of kick with decent pace to match (115mph is hardly rolling the serve into court). A gutsy but savvy tactic when you’re down second serve and break point.
If you’re serving into the advantage court, whichever direction you serve to, it’s going to have to be a doozy. Djokovic was beaten out wide to the backhand with a huge average pace of 127.9mph. Serving down the T to the forehand, 124.2mph was the magic number - still a helluva lot of pace and testament to how big players have to serve to beat Djokovic on the ad court.
If you’re serving into the deuce court, and you’re right-handed, it is a lot easier to open up Djokovic’s side of the court with a slice-serve out wide. Players do not have to go for as much to get the same effect on serve (Roger Federer is a genius at this play), hence the marked difference in average speed to this wing at 116mph. When beating Djokovic down the T in the deuce court, players flattened out their serve to an average speed of 127.3 mph.
Oddly enough, however, serves went unreturned 35.9% of the time in the ad court and 31% of the time in the deuce court. If you want to beat Djokovic’s return, having a powerful flat serve that you can direct out wide to the deuce court may be key to winning more points on this wing. Zverev did this masterfully throughout his match, whilst Medvedev, whose serve tends towards more slice out wide in the deuce court, had only three serves go unreturned from this area of the court.
What have we learnt?
First things first, this brief study is not perfect and will probably act as the basis for me to do some future research. The minute differences in service placement, the 130mph serves Djokovic did return, service disguise and anticipation were not taken into account.
Here are some takeaways from some relatively surface-level numbers, however.
Djokovic’s backhand return was stronger than his forehand return at this year’s Australian Open. Players should direct their serves to the forehand more slightly more frequently than the backhand.
Beating Djokovic’s return of serve in the ad court and down the T in the deuce court requires plenty of pace. If you want to beat him with the serve out wide in the deuce court, less pace is required due to the angle one can hit with a right-handed serve. Still, having a flat serve you can direct out wide in the deuce court couldn’t hurt to win you a few extra cheap points.
Bottom line: if you can hit a 128mph bomb out wide in the ad court, you’ve probably got a decent chance of not having to hit another ball against the very best player in the world!
Thank you to all my new subscribers, I hope you are enjoying the content. If you enjoyed this article, please click the subscribe button below. Thanks!
An unforced error on return is rare. Give most returners, let alone Djokovic, some time on the ball and the return will be made almost every time. Servers very rarely give the returner time on the ball, even able to force an error with a massive kick second serve on occasion. Djokovic made 20 return unforced errors throughout the tournament.
After Djokovic sustained a muscle tear on the right-hand side of his body in their third set, Fritz was able to exploit the injury with his serve. Djokovic was left covering his forehand, exposing his backhand wing. It was particularly bad in the fourth set when Djokovic made 6 of 23 returns. I decided to leave out these sets as they are not indicative of how well a player needs to serve to beat Djokovic’s return.