US Open Day 2: Fernando Verdasco and his improving reliability

Benjamin Becker has a big-hitting baseline game, but it doesn't come naturally to him. He plays with relentless aggression on his service games, and his game is almost exclusively constructed around his first serve where he looks to push his opponents out of court, then he keeps them on a string. He doesn't let them off the hook.

I think you'll find in most cases, he hits almost every shot into the open court, though he does also enjoy hitting the off-forehand like most players. It's typical hardcourt tennis. Maybe it's because of the way he dresses on-court but the mechanical nature of his groundstrokes reminds me of a fellow German, Rainer Schuettler, particularly on the forehand side where he really throws themselves into the shot and muscles it, but not in the same way that for example, Novak Djokovic uncoils himself.

Becker really has to put in a lot of effort to get the most out of his service games. The way he plays, you can tell that he knows that he needs to be on the front foot. He can't let his opponents control him, because his movement is suspect, and I think just as much his reactions aren't that great to take that first quick step as well.

On the basis of this, Becker played a good match against Fernando Verdasco like a man who had a vision for what he wanted to do with the ball, and he executed it well, aside for one poor service game at the start of the match and one at the end of the match, the latter which was pressure-induced.

To play well, he needs to serve well and that's what he did. I really like his serve out wide on the deuce court and down the T on the ad court in particular. He has a knack of being able to make them slide out wide further than most players, and from then he can control the point with his forehand. After the serve, the groundstrokes did the job for him but it didn't look secure, like they needed to be hit without hesitation and good timing to hit their targets. Becker's forehand looks like a shot that's prone to break down under pressure, and that's what happened in the end of the match.

It seemed a mismatch, in that Becker would have had to play at the top of his game, and Verdasco to have an off-day, for this to be anything other than a routine victory for Verdasco. The difference in natural ability seemed quite evident, in that Verdasco hardly had to push himself or exert his full effort to make the most out of his shots, he simply needed to be committed to a point and not make any cheap exits out of it, like he might have done over a year ago.

Sometimes I tend to read natural and effortless power for having a more technically sound game, but in this case the evidence was there in Verdasco's shot selection as well. He largely kept it high percentage, and whenever he needed a point, instead of raising his game, he raised his effort level and willingness to stay in rallies and that proved to be too much for Becker. Verdasco seems to have learnt a lot about how to play pressure-inducing tennis, that if you make your opponent fight to win every point, it can build up to have its greatest benefits when you most need it.

These days, there doesn't seem to be as much of a discrepancy between Verdasco's forehand and backhand, and he can use his backhand quite well to place the ball and construct points. He doesn't use his forehand to hit outright winners or go for the full-paced shot as much anymore. It's more of a controlled shot, and he's been exploring more what he can do with the spin that he generates on the ball to take his opponents off court

He played one poor service game in the middle of the second set but the way he recovered and found his best tennis to break back immediately and break again to win serve spoke volumes about his status as a much improved match player.