Searching for Roger

James Blake is good player. He's top ten. He plays an aggressive baseline game where he takes chances. He beats opponents because he can hit a bit harder than they can, but if his game is off, then he runs into trouble.

In eight tries against Roger Federer, Blake had only ever won one set. He couldn't figure out how to beat Roger Federer. Typically, this means one player has confidence in his play and the other feels frustration.

But even Blake knew that people were whispering about Federer. He was no longer the same player. He had uncharacteristic losses early in the year, compounded by mono, and then got decimate in the French final. Even when he appeared to have his game together, he needed rain delays, and some great shots to force a fifth set with Nadal, and even then, he lost during the waning daylight.

He then lost to Gilles Simon with errors a plenty, then to the hard serving Ivo Karlovic. Still, Federer assured us, that he was fine, that the only thing that mattered was the Olympics and the US Open.

I saw a few points of Blake playing Simon. Blake had already beaten Simon in a match last week in Cincinnati. Simon is a very steady, quick player that can fetch enough balls, and make enough shots that he can beat most average players. Blake wins because he pressures Simon, making forcing shots setting himself up. And Blake appeared to be crisp. He was making those shots.

Although Roger managed to eke out a win over Berdych, he had a tough time with Berdych's serve. He looked like he was struggling more than he had to, which made me think that Blake, despite a dismal record, would feel he had a chance. And indeed, he played aggressive off the ground, and Federer looked very shaky chasing shots down.

While Federer has a good serve, he's never been the kind of ace machine Sampras was. Indeed, that made him a more interesting player to watch. But this creates problems. More likely than not, when Federer is in trouble, he can't serve an ace to get out of it. He did it at Wimbledon (somewhat), but it's important to get a few free points.

This meant Blake had chances in many games to stay in the point. Federer also doesn't like really long points. If he feels pressure, and Blake was applying it, then he goes on the offensive. However, once he does that, he begins to miss, tick the top of the net, as if he's waiting for the stars to align and he goes into a zone.

It's a peculiar tactic to say the least. One that says that it's better to have lots of errors than play tentatively. You would think, with practice, he'd aim more safer, make sure he wasn't getting so close to the lines. In other words, either be more accurate, or take fewer chances.

Rather than let Blake beat himself, Federer would give him points. To be fair, Blake was hitting well, and Federer probably felt a conservative playing style would cause Blake to make winners even more easily.

This isn't to say that Federer might not come around and win the US Open. He now has a few days to prepare (the bad news, in that respect, is that he's still playing doubles with Wawrinka, so he can't take a flight out of China right away) for the US Open that he wouldn't otherwise. He can certainly still practice in China (I guess) and see how that works for him.

Federer's practice routine was severely impacted when he got sick at the beginning of the year, and it seems to have hurt his game ever since. Now that he makes errors with 5-6 shots off the ground, a steady player can, in principle, just wait until this happens.

I think people want him to play better, to be competitive with Djokovic and especially Nadal. Part of the problem is how stubbornly he sticks to this style of play. You would think his manager and coach would simply tell him to look at the unforced errors and ask him if that's the way he should play. I suspect Federer is a stubborn man. He has been winning for so long by himself that he may take anyone else's advice with a grain of salt.

By the way, his manager is his girlfriend.

So what happens to Roger? No one expected his game to deteriorate like this, competitive enough to make finals, but then struggling as well. It's more instructive looking at the way he loses. It would be one thing if it were someone like Michael Chang where players simply learned to outhit him. But it feels like Roger is helping players out by missing so much, more than even average players miss.