Stan's Journey to Roland Garros Title

Even before the men's singles draw of the 2015 Roland Garros was out, everyone was expecting the world number one, Novak Djokovic to lift the Coupe des Mosquetaires and complete his career slam. After the draw was released, most people thought that the winner of the tournament would be the winner of the quarterfinal match between Novak Djokovic and nine-time champion Rafael Nadal. But history repeated itself as a Swiss player denied the conquerer of Rafael Nadal the chance to lift the French Open trophy. Stan Wawrinka played some inspiring tennis to first oust the second seed Roger Federer in the quarterfinal and then probably the best tennis of his life to beat Novak Djokovic in the final.

Across the tournament, Stan won 100% of his matches while he won 87.5% (21/24) of the sets he played. If we further drill down, we find that he won only 61.1% (143/234) of the total games he played. And among all these games, he won only 54.5% of the total points. So you just have to win just marginally more number of points than your opponent. So it is very important to win most of the crucial points (like break points). Let’s see how Stan outplayed his opponents in the whole tournament.

Service

Stan's service was very inconsistent, especially in the first week of the tournament. The first serve percentage for Stan in the first four matches was merely 48.8%. That gave a lot of opportunity to his opponents to create pressure on Stan’s serve. This especially became clear in his second round match with Serbia’s Dusan Lajovic. Stan served at 43.5% in this match and won 70.2% of his first serve points, his lowest in the tournament. Stan served at a ridiculously low first serve percentage of 42.5% in his match against Gilles Simon. Luckily on that day, even Gilles was not serving well. He too had a first serve percentage of 42.5%. So Stan managed to escape with a comfortable win in that match. In fact, Stan didn’t cross the 60% mark on first serve before the final. But he managed to win 78.9% of his first serve points. 

The woes continued in the second serve too. Stan made 27 double faults in the tournament. That made his second serve points won remain very low at 56.6%. However, even with this weak service, there was just once that his opponent had more winning percentage on either first serve or the second serve. And that happened in the final match where Novak won 53.3% of his second serve points while Stan won just 50%. So Stan overcame his weak serve by putting pressure on his opponent’s serve. His tactic of receiving the second serve from far behind the base line worked well. This tactic gave him more time to react to the serve and thus he could easily go into the attack mode from the first shot. This reflected in his win percentage of receiving points.

Round	Opponent	First serve points won	Second serve points won	Receiving points won
R128	M. Ilhan	78.0%	58.3%	45.8%
R64	D. Lajovic	70.2%	51.4%	47.4%
R32	S. Johnson	92.7%	60.0%	41.0%
R16	G. Simon	79.4%	58.7%	47.1%
QF	R. Federer	88.0%	61.9%	36.6%
SF	J. W. Tsonga	75.6%	58.7%	33.3%
F	N. Djokovic	76.2%	50.0%	40.6%
Tournament total		78.9%	56.6%	41.2%

Winners

This is an area where Stan ruled throughout the tournament. Stan had showed early on in the tournament that his game plan was to be aggressive and he asserted this again in the quarterfinal match against Roger Federer. Stan’s 324 winners compared to his opponents’ 179 is amazing. Throughout his career, Stan’s forehand has never been really strong and has led to a lot of errors. But Stan and his coach Magnus Norman have done a commendable job in this department and Stan has used his forehand very effectively in the last 2 years. And this time also, his forehand did most of the damage to his opponents. He hit 135 forehand winners compared to his opponents’ 63. His backhand has always been 'lethal' and this time also, he hit 62 backhand winners while his opponents could manage only 29.

Unforced Errors

A side effect of playing too aggressively is that there is higher probability of making a lot of unforced errors. And Stan did make a lot of unforced errors but only marginally more than his opponents. Stan hit a total of 266 unforced errors compared to his opponents’ 250. That is not a large difference. In fact, in his semifinal match, Tsonga’s unforced errors became a key for Stan to win the match. Stan won just 6 points more than Tsonga (155-149) while Tsonga made 5 unforced errors more than Stan Wawrinka (48-53). So, offense managed to beat defense in all of Stan’s matches. By mounting pressure on his opponent from the very first point, Stan managed to not allow his opponents play their natural game.

Net Play

Stan’s net play has improved considerably since he started working with Magnus Norman. I believe that Severin Luthi also has a lot of contribution in this. ;) Stan won 70.9% (127/158) of his net points. This also became a key in the final as Stan won 69.7% of net points compared to Novak’s 58.3%.

Pre-final vs Final

Stan had a lot of areas to improve going into the final against the best player of the world, most importantly his serve considering the fact that the guy across the net was the best returner of all time. Also, Novak was toying with his opponents with is jaw dropping drop shots. So, Stan had to make sure he gets those drop shots and doesn't miss at the net. And Stan did that very efficiently. His first serve percentage jumped from 50.5% pre-final tournament average to 66.7% in the final. And that made a lot of difference. Getting the first serve in is very crucial against Novak because Novak can be extremely dangerous against your second serve. Stan won 76.2% of his first serve points while his second serve win percentage dropped to 50.0%. But the battle didn't end here. Stan put a lot of pressure on Novak's serve. Novak won just 62.7% of his first serve points and 53.3% of second serve points. Stan also did very well at getting Novak's drop shots. Novak could hit only 2 drop shot winners in the match. Stan did very well at the net too by winning 69.7% points compared to Novak's 58.3%.

In the above 'Game analysis' chart, we can see that Stan played more aggressively in the final than in the first 6 matches. He approached the net more often and hit more winner per game while his unforced error count remained almost same. So the keys in the final were Stan's huge improvement in the first serve percentage (50.5% to 66.7%), Novak's low first serve win percentage (62.7%), Stan's aggressive net play (69.7% points won at the net) and hitting more winners (60 vs Novak's 30) while keeping unforced (45 vs Novak's 41) errors under check.

But the most important factor in Stan's victory were his shorts, or should they be called boxers. 

credits: Troll Tennis