Seeing Potential or Limitations?: Discussing Sam Querrey's Prospects

This time last year, Sam Querrey seemed to be on his way to making a steady rise up the rankings. Before his performance at the US Open last year where he lost to Rafael Nadal in the 4th round, perhaps it was hard to see what Querrey could develop his game into to become a consistent threat.

When it comes to spotting raw talent, it must be said that it’s not really my forte. When do you decide that some weaknesses are holes in a player’s game that can be considerably improved or whether it will end up being their achilles heel for the rest of their careers?

I recall commentators years ago mentioning how Dinara Safina’s movement was a big weakness. And it’s not like her ball-striking abilities impressed people in a way that Lindsay Davenport did. Should it be concluded that because of Querrey’s height, we can’t really expect him to be that mobile around the court?

It’s been documented in the past year that Querrey has been working on his fitness and movement. Watching him play, footwork should probably be just as much of a priority. I was having a look at his stroke production and it seemed to be very much an upper-body motion, particularly with one of his major weapons, the forehand.

With the top players, footwork and stroke production is really combined as one action in itself, so I guess I’d describe that as having as a fluid motion. But with Querrey, he’s trying to hit his forehand with as much force as possible with his racquet swing, while trying to maintain the right footwork in his movement and keeping his steps precise. I don’t think footwork comes naturally to him. It’s something he’s had to work on, and will need to continue to work on. He’s just so naturally relaxed in his approach to tennis that it bogs him down at times, although it would surely make him an excellent Davis Cup player.

The Newport semi-final contested between Querrey and Fabrice Santoro was an interesting contrast of styles, demonstrating two very different ways of taking control of points. Querrey using the natural power that he possesses on his groundstrokes, particularly his forehand to dominate points. But Santoro showed that there are other ways to take control of a point other than hitting hard, penetrating groundstrokes.

The intent wasn’t to place the ball out of Querrey’s reach, but rather to try to make Querrey stretch out for shots, hit shots off-balance then keep him moving around on the dead run, defending while being completely helpless. Those crosscourt short angle slices really work well to open up the court, particularly on the backhand side. Grass is definitely an excellent surface for Santoro, his slice shots skidding lower and being more difficult to punish for his opponents.

The problem was if Santoro couldn’t place the ball wide enough or deep enough, that allowed Querrey to take control of the points, and Querrey was patient enough to not give away too many errors. He was hitting the ball hard while realizing at the same time that often it’s not necessary to hit the ball close to the lines. In this particular match-up, he could afford to be patient. Patience is also something that Querrey has had to work on over the years, being less of a loose cannon in his shotmaking and waiting for the right shot to pull the trigger. He still makes a fair amount of errors although I feel that more of those are movement-related, where he struggles particularly on the dead run to do anything other than block the ball back.

In the end, the biggest difference in this match was the strength of Querrey’s serve. They popped up on the screen the serving statistics of all the entrants of the tournament, to show that Querrey was convincingly leading the ace statistics of all four semi-finalists, serving about twice as many as the second place scorer, Rajeev Ram.

Querrey has a nice and relaxed smooth service action, and it’s very efficient too. It doesn’t look like anything spectacular; it’s more of an upright motion than most of the good servers. He doesn’t throw his body weight into the shot as much but the simplicity of it allows him to hit his spots well (or at least he did in this match). He played a superb second set tie-break, hitting an unreturnable serve on every one of his service points, as well as stepping up his level on return as well to comfortably take the tie-break in the second set, and win in straight sets.