How Rafael Nadal defeated Daniil Medvedev at the 2022 Australian Open

A match analysis of Rafa's unbelievable comeback from two sets to love down over Daniil Medvedev in the final of the 2022 Australian Open.

Feb 02, 2022

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When Rafael Nadal fell two sets down to Daniil Medvedev in the Australian Open final last Sunday, nobody - not even Carlos Moya - thought he had in a chance in hell.

It’s the third time in six Grand Slam finals we’ve seen the two sets down comeback take place but this one felt different. Rafa had just come back from injury and was up against a younger fitter opponent with the best numbers on hard-courts over the last year or so.

There should have been no way back from two sets down.

But somehow he found a way.

Here’s my attempt at analysing one of the most insane pieces of theatre I’ve ever witnessed!

Vamos!

Act I: Too Strong From The Back (First Set)

Before the match started, many had praised Rafa for the improvements he’d made to his serve, particularly his second which he was hitting faster on average than Berrettini going into his semifinal.

As the final got underway, it was clear that Rafa’s service improvements would have little bearing against the distinct returning strategy of Daniil Medvedev, especially on the second.

Rafa’s wasn’t hitting his spots on his first-serve (Medvedev missed two first serve returns in the first set).
Rafa’s second-serve speed made no difference whatsoever to the outcome of the point - in fact, his second-serve speed in points lost was 1.4mph faster on average than in the second-serve points he won.

For the first set, a measly 34% of Rafa’s service points were finished in 0-4 shots… and unfortunately for Spaniards across the globe, Medvedev had the advantage in the longer rallies.

Medvedev (bottom) neutralises a decent Rafa (top) serve and peppers the Rafa backhand with forehands and backhands until he can open up the court. Generally he’s not afraid to go down the line with his flat backhand, eventually drawing the error from Rafa.

I wanted you to see a point before I tried to explain the extraordinary baseline dynamic between these two players.

Less strong shots: Rafa’s backhand and Medvedev’s forehand. Rafa’s “weakness” is slightly less weak than Medvedev’s as he’s more comfortable creating his own pace off that wing (both players are more comfortable going cross-court generally so of course would opt to go into their opponent’s weakness).
Strong shots: Rafa’s forehand and Medvedev’s backhand. A clash of titans cross-court as Medvedev’s super-flat backhand goes into the Spaniard’s revered loopy forehand. Trading strengths cross-court favours Medvedev, however - his flat trajectory stops Rafa from going down the line as easily as he would like whereas Medvedev take the ball on more comfortably off Rafa’s high bouncing balls.

For these reasons, Medvedev was generally more comfortable finding Rafa’s weaker wing earlier in the rally. The first set was over quickly, Rafa not coping with it well at all - he six cross-court backhand unforced errors (he hit five for the rest of the match!).

Regroup.

Act II: Balancing The Match With Variety (Start of the Second Set to Mid-Third Set)

Rafa’s backhand did join the party, able to be aggressive enough with it cross-court to creep closer to Medvedev’s level from the back.

But he still wasn’t dominating. Far from it - Medvedev still had that edge, his speedy cross-court backhand making it tough for Rafa to graft an advantage off a neutral ball.

Fortunately, Rafa’s bag of tricks is extremely deep - he was able to keep the scoreline much tighter by employing a little variation.

We knew we’d see Rafa (top) finish the points in different ways to counter the wall (at the US Open in 2019, Rafa used serve-and-volley *a lot* to exploit Medvedev’s (bottom) deep court position). Here we see Rafa using the drop-shot with Medvedev on the back-foot (this shot was *incredibly* important… more on this later…).

Nadal (top) uses a couple of slices to earn himself a (sort of) attackable backhand. Credit to Medvedev (bottom) who actually dealt with the slice very well today. On a quicker court, he has less issues keeping the ball neutral (see Dimitrov at Indian Wells last year for what can happen on a slow-court).

And of course, the net approach. This point pretty much encompasses everything we’ve said so far - Rafa (bottom) hits a decent serve but it comes back to his feet - Medvedev (top) is the first to attack his opponent’s weakness and gets up in the point - Rafa defends very well to get back to neutral - to avoid trading strengths Rafa goes down the line with the forehand (a little unconvincingly) - Rafa looks to finish the point with variety - Medvedev edges the point (and the set) as Rafa can’t quite execute. Phew.

Rafa was doing all the right things to keep himself alive.

Winning percentage: Won 65% of the points where he approached the net or used a drop shot.
Pressure: Used an approach shot or a drop shot on 5/10 break points on either player’s serve throughout the second set and won all five of them.

Still, up to a turning point midway through the third set, here’s where things stood.

Serve? Slight advantage Medvedev though Rafa’s serve was looking miles better than it was at the start of the match, particularly with some volleying chucked in.
Baseline? Things were kept closer with Chef Rafa’s spices but trading groundstrokes favoured Medvedev, the rallies 5+ shots from set 2 to our turning point going the Muscovite’s way by 40 points to 28.

But then…

Act III: The Turning Point (Mid-Third Set to End of the Fourth Set)

The long rally domination continued and as Medvedev rifled a backhand down the line at the end of a 14-shot rally, Rafa looked done, finito.

Down 2-3.

Hasta la vista.

Down 0-40.

Adiós.

Drop Shot Lesson

Besides a backhand unforced error at 15-40 (still a big miss), the two other break points were won/lost with drop shots.

Nadal’s (bottom) drop shot: almost exclusively played off the forehand and very often played inside-out. Nadal is acutely aware of Medvedev’s (top) position in the court off the back of a heavy forehand and pulls off a sweet drop shot (albeit a pretty risky one over the highest part of the net).

Medvedev’s (top) drop shot: almost exclusively played off the backhand and very often played down the line from the ad-court (over the highest part of the net). Nadal’s (bottom) takes on a court position marginally closer to the baseline and is able to track this one down in *just* enough time.

Both players tend to play their drop shots off of their favoured groundstrokes - with their opponent retreating expecting a powerful shot, the drop shot is used to catch them on the back-foot.

Here’s why Nadal’s is the stronger of the two.

Medvedev’s court position is generally a little deeper than Nadal’s i.e. more ground to cover to track down the drop shot.
The forehand drop shot is easier to disguise. Medvedev has to take a hand off the racket to play the drop shot whilst Nadal’s forehand lends itself to a very speedy change in grip.
Nadal has a ton of options from the deuce court. His forehand is more explosive from this position than Medvedev’s cross-court backhand meaning his opponent is further back in the court plus he can play over the lowest part of the net into his opponent’s weaker wing (Medvedev has to play over the highest part of the net to reach Nadal’s weaker wing).

Watch a couple more with these points in mind.

Medvedev (bottom) is behind the Melbourne sign when the drop shot is played over the lowest part of the net. Plays as good a shot as he could play but Nadal (top) dips it to his feet at the net. *Bonus advantage*: Medvedev is weaker at net than Nadal.

Medvedev (top) tries to play over the highest part of the net with Nadal (bottom) parked in front of the Melbourne sign. He misses the drop shot anyway on a very important point.

Nadal points won when playing a drop shot: 63%
Medvedev points won when playing a drop shot: 46%

Why are we talking about drop shots?

When Medvedev played that ominous drop shot at 3-2 30-40, he had only played two throughout the match. As you can see from the essay I’ve just written, it’s not the percentage play for him. What happened?

Conditions and Fatigue

This was arguably the first sign the 2021 US Open champion was out of his element.

As he grew weary and the conditions slowed, the longer rallies tipped in Nadal’s favour (33-20 from the turning point to the end of the fourth set) and Medvedev was clutching at straws to find new ways of finishing the point1.

I don’t agree a tactical adjustment changed the momentum *but* this is a good graphic to show that as the conditions changed and his opponent waned, Nadal was able to hit the ball harder with more time on the ball, find his opponent’s weakness more frequently and ultimately win the longer rallies (thanks to Data Drive Sports Analytics for this one).

Medvedev’s ‘fatigue’ is open to speculation. It could have been mental as much as physical, pointing out after the match how the crowd’s attitude “stopped the kid in him from dreaming”.

The conditions however certainly slowed and (I guess surprisingly) this favoured Nadal. I totally expected Medvedev to look the fresher of the two if the match went late into the night and that the lack of bounce from the court would favour Medvedev - but I didn’t account for Nadal’s superhuman physicality2.

With slightly more time to dance around his forehand, he took on bigger shots (his net/drop shot frequency actually going down as the match went late into the night) as Medvedev struggled to get to shots with the same explosivity as he did in the first two sets.

Nadal (top) is the one that started to dictate the baseline rallies, finding the inside-out ball more frequently, able to hit through the conditions and move around the court more competently than Daniil (top).

So far, so good?

Now for the finale…

Act IV: The Home Stretch (Fifth Set)

With the scoreline squared up and the dynamic of the match staying put, Rafa looked unshakable.

Medvedev (bottom) hits one of his better forehands of the last half of the match and Rafa (top) responds with a howitzer.

The rally above was an indication of another change though. Medvedev dug real deep to get his legs moving and his shots firing (he mentioned how hard he tried in the press conference - you could practically hear the pure exertion and pain in his grunts after every shot).

From 3-2 in the fifth, the baseline rallies five or more shots were split at 11 apiece.

New-dal

Cue post-30-year-old Nadal’s serve to make all the difference.

In an 18-point service game at 3-2, Nadal served seven unreturned serves. Almost all of the traffic was directed towards Medvedev’s backhand - though this goes against the grain of serving direction from Nadal, I wouldn’t say Medvedev was caught off-guard. He maybe looked a little slow out to get the wide ones but some of them he just… missed (see the final deuce of this game). Still, credit to Nadal’s improved serve as the placement was decent enough to trouble Medvedev.
His third ace of the match at 6-5 30-0 (though the let-cord noise did go off unnoticed!).

Medvedev’s Inside-Out Forehand

And my final thought.

Medvedev gave himself a chance as he clawed his way back to 5-5 but he missed an inside-out forehand on break point against him to give the break right back.

Big deal? I think it is - it’s generally a steady shot but Medvedev struggling to generate pace consistently off an inside-out forehand isn’t a one-off. It’s never a shot that’s been comfortably in his arsenal and I’d like to argue it’s one of the huge reasons he struggles in this match-up compared to, say… Novak Djokovic.

Djokovic is on a 21-set streak on hard-courts against Nadal, losing more than four games in only two of these sets.
Medvedev has won 7/18 sets on hard-court against Nadal.

This stat is no coincidence.

Take the 2019 Australian Open final where Djokovic trounced Nadal for the loss of eight games.

Djokovic (top) is able to open up the court by going BIG into the Nadal (bottom) forehand, now famously the tactic he employed over and over again to kill the Spaniard's greatest strength. The inside-out forehand gave him the ability to keep Nadal guessing with the option to hook down the line a far easier option off this wing.

How often do we see this kind of play from Daniil Medvedev?

Notice how far over Medvedev (bottom) is to receive a backhand from the deuce court. A different and still somewhat effective plan of attack, sure, but his options are limited from some areas of the court.

Food for thought Gilles Cervara.

Drinks in the Foyer

My parting thoughts on one of the greatest matches we’ve seen in a while.

What a sight to behold. Rafa looked down and out but one vamos followed another, the partisan crowd grew increasingly rowdier, you could practically smell the sweat dripping off the old bull as the clock ticked over five hours - and then suddenly…

The first player to win the Australian Open final from two sets down in the Open Era.
The second player to win all four majors twice in the Open Era.
The sixth-oldest major champion.

… and the winner of the most Grand Slams in history.

It was honestly a fantastic watch and even having acknowledged the change in baseline dynamics, the shot variation from each player serving different purposes, Nadal’s modern serve bailing him out etc… there’s something truly incomprehensible about the win, something only Rafa can really understand.

I have nothing else to say but bravo!

Stay tuned for the women’s final…

Other pieces throughout AO:

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Medvedev’s drop shot frequency went from just over 1% per point to over 7% per point in the third and fourth sets. Nadal’s remained steady at around the 4-5% mark in both sets 1-2 and sets 3-5.

Nadal’s physicality deserves so much praise. The guy just kept going, truly embodying the old Rafa-adage of fighting for every point like it’s his last. I’ve never been so willing to eat my own words from the last article! (Gone are the days where Nadal has the energy to fight for every point like it’s his last this deep in the Slams)

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