Both Serena and Federer waited for two years to win another Grand Slam title. Both players had been dominant in the mid 2000s and won a number of Grand Slams. Federer improved men's record of Grand Slam titles to 17 and Serena won her 14th Grand Slam title.
What a turn of events!
Serena spent 2011 with some unfortunate lethal health problems. First, she had a cut in her foot, then had a very serious disease in her lungs, which might have serious consequences, let alone playing tennis in this level. But she persevered and recovered from that disease and started playing tennis in WTA level in Wimbledon 2011 after a one year of break. She was in very good form physically and had some serious success in Master's tournaments and came to the final of US OPen 2011, which she lost to Sam Stosur who played unbelievable tennis. It was such an extraordinary form from Stosur, that she thrashed Serena, who was also in very good form. Although Serena didn't have a sensational success in the following Grand Slams she had a 56-6 winning record after her return and won 5 tournaments winning all her matches against top 10 players. But this Wimbledon final sealed her success story with a sensational end.
On men's side, many authorities had agreed on the relative decline of Federer compared to other top players Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, who won the last 9 Slam titles. Aside from the title counts, Federer's form was not promising, especially in 5 set matches, which are confined to only Slams. We can name different reasons causing this relative decline. One of them, probably the predominant one would be the fact that he is 30 years old and does not have the stamina to withstand numerous long rallies with these guys. This fact seemed to be underlying reason behind his loss to Djokovic in RG 2012 in straight sets. Having in mind that red clay is the most physically demanding surface in tennis and lessens the effects of big serves, you have to endure long rallies and ready to hit and run all the time. In addition to that loss, his loss to Nadal in Australian open 2012 in SF, was a carbon copy of that defeat. To be concrete, Nadal and Djokovic are stronger and have a big arsenal of shots and tactics to hurt him, in open air and slower courts. (Australian open's surface is regarded as one of the slowest hard courts due to the chemical compounds constituting the court.)
But this is not the whole story. Federer is a big champion and never gives up. He keeps on working his shots and tactics with his well-known coach Paul Annacone. He is still able to defeat top players in best of 3-set events like his win over Nadal in Miami Open in early 2012 or his consecutive wins over top 10 players in the World Tour Finals in London. But his most preferred surface is grass and most preferred conditions is indoor conditions. (World Tour Finals in London is played indoors as well) I don't want to enter more details but would like to say that his semi-final match against Djokovic and the second part of the Wimbledon final after rain delay was played with a closed roof, which makes the court a pseudo indoor court. This means both the court surface and the conditions favor Federer. In my opinion, these conditions cause the turn around of his form and play against Djokovic in Wimbledon SF. His serving performance was unbelievably good against Djokovic, both his first and second serve. Djokovic, who is considered to be one of the greatest returners, was unable to react against these serves.
Closing the roof had a similar impact on Sunday's final. We can observe the change of forms of both players in the final if we see the match as two parts: one before the roof is closed and the one after the roof is closed. We cannot say that this is for sure the primary cause of turn of events in the final, maybe Murray already started to struggle with his back, or maybe as the tension escalated in the match, his tempers frayed. Yet, I give you two graphs which portray how precise Federer's shots became after the roof was closed.
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| Double faults of the players in the course of the game (Federer green, Murray purple) |
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What do these figures represent? Why didn't I just give the number of winners or double faults per each set?
The answer is simple actually. We could still infer something from the number of winners or double faults per set but when we see the frequency of them scattered with respect to time, it is easier to make inference. The red line in the first figure separates the match into two parts, first part with open top and second part with closed top. And we can see how the number of unforced errors of Federer diminsihes as the ones of Murray increases.
Second figure shows the number of winners and we can see the same shift of momentum in both players' performances. However, this figure is less clear, yet roof is not the only driver of increasing performance of Federer. For example, in the second set Federer changed tactics and started to come to the net very often to shorten the points and hence to avoid long rallies which ate his stamina and scored many winners with volleys and smashes, which explains the densely scattered winners in the second set. And I put two red lines to exclude the longest game of the match, in which Federer eventually break Murray's serve.
I hope I could give some practical information about what's going on the court as well as how these players' form changes from time to time. I think we really had a very enjoyable tournament, with some big upsets like Sharapova's and Nadal's early exits. We also had a really tense and exciting final in men's singles. Though the women's final was a bit single sided (no offense to Radwanska but the course of the final heavily depended on the ups and downs of Serena) I hope to see much better tournaments with new flashy Germans Lisicki and Kerber and many other contenders for number 1 spot.
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