The Bludgeon And The Rapier

!Marin1

By TW Contributing Editor Andrew Burton

Most of the core insights in military strategy were formulated a long time ago.  Which is pretty logical, when you think about it, because humans have been fighting for a very long time.  "Git thar fust with the most men," "the moral is to the physical as three to one," "everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult."   (A shoutout to anyone who can identify the sources of these quotes).  Then there's one of my favorite aphorisms, "no plan survives contact with the enemy."

Occasionally, a new idea comes along.  So if you want to look smart at military strategy parties, or you're trying to find a new metaphor for ATP matches and "trench warfare" isn't cutting it for you, try the OODA Loop (Observe-Orient-Decide-Attack).  Alternatively, if that's too much of a mouthful (or if you have difficulty remembering acronyms), we'll put it this way: how do you take time away from your opponent?

Marin Cilic and Donald Young have different approaches to this question, partly due, no doubt, to their different physical endowments.  Young, 19 tomorrow, is listed as 6' 0"" on the ATP site, but his slight frame (he's listed at 160lbs) makes him seem 3 inches shorter.  Cilic is twenty pounds heavier and 6 inches taller.  They didn't play each other today, but the geography of the courts at York University meant that I could sit in the stands at Court 1 and look over and see some of the action on the Grandstand court.  On Court 1, Cilic took on Lukas Dlouhy, an obscure Czech doubles specialist who bears a strong resemblance to obscure British actor Mark Williams.  On the Grandstand court, Young attempted to upset Gilles Simon, the current (though likely not for long) leader of the US Open series.

Cilic's game plan is pretty simple - hit winners, early.  He used his height to hit big first serves and steepling kick second serves, trying to end his service points on the third shot at the latest.  His 83% serve hold percentage sounds impressive until you compare it with his peers, the ATP top 50.  He's ranked just 19th in this respect, and only 33rd on return games with a 21% break percentage.

Statistics are my bread and butter, but they only tell you part of the story.  Watching the first set of Cilic-Dlouhy, I could see that Cilic can hit, but I didn't see any guile in his game.  Nor did I see top class speed or quickness.  Cilic will be 20 in September - he's about the same age Novak Djokovic was when he played Federer in Melbourne in the 2007 AO R16.  Djokovic was already a top 20 player at the time, so maybe the comparison is a little unfair, but you can see that even in a match that Federer won cleanly (58%-42%) Djokovic had all the tools to compete at a very high level.

At the end of a 6-3 (Cilic) set, I decamped for the Grandstand.  Young had just lost the first set 6-1 to Simon.  The bits that I saw from the Court 1 stands are consistent with the way I remember Young playing Nadal at IW.  Young came across as primarily a defensive player, mostly concerned with hitting the ball with lots of topspin and keeping it deep, trying to coax a mistake out of an opponent.  Against Nadal at IW, the primary exponent of this approach in today's game, it hadn't worked too well.  It looked like the outcome against Simon would be similar.

But in the second set, Young decided to change things up, moving to an 80% serve-and-volley strategy, and he attacked the net frequently in return games.  This had two potential positives - it was likely a surprise to Simon, and it would take time away from the Frenchman, if executed consistently.  Unfortunately, it was beyond Young's ability to execute the new strategy successfully.  He held in the first two games, but Simon got his eye in, and started to put some sting on his returns.  Young, broken twice in succession, briefly aroused a glimmer of hope by breaking at 2-5, but conceded his next service game tamely for a 1-6, 3-6 loss (39/60, a thumping).

"The key is to obscure your intentions and make them unpredictable to your opponent while you simultaneously clarify his intentions. That is, operate at a faster tempo to generate rapidly changing conditions that inhibit your opponent from adapting or reacting to those changes and that suppress or destroy his awareness. Thus, a hodgepodge of confusion and disorder occur to cause him to over- or under-react to conditions or activities that appear to be uncertain, ambiguous, or incomprehensible."

This works for some players (think Federer), but not others (think Nadal).  If you can consistently execute a shot, a play or an attack that an opponent knows to be coming, but lacks the forces or ability to deal with you can win.  The bludgeon or the rapier?  In the right hands, either can do the job.  Staying with my theme of trying to catch the next wave, I don't get the impression that either Donald Young or Marin Cilic has big enough weapons to crush the competition and win their own long war.