Thoughts on the strange and deceiving Nadal-Edmund match

-By Trenton Jocz
It feels appropriate for my first entry at this blog to be about Rafael Nadal. For those unfamiliar with me, I'm a big Nadal fan, but objective and not "territorial" about the other guys (even if I'm annoyed by Federer's occasional condescension or Djokovic's post-match "share the love" routine among various other things, they're fine overall and I don't see outright villains in this incredible era of men's tennis).
Anyway, wanted to share some thoughts on the bizarre second rounder between Nadal and Kyle Edmund, the first meeting between the two:
-I mention deceiving in the headline because the scoreline isn't entirely fair. I thought Edmund played more of a 6-2 set in the first despite his flying forehands, while Nadal's double fault on his first time broken obscures that Edmund was lucky to break, thanks to two netcords that messed Rafa up.

-Given Nadal's patterns this year, the hold/break splits were surprising, though clay has an impact. Nadal this season has been subtly excellent on serve in terms of hold rate and second serve points won, among other things. I think the 2015/2016 perceptions remain in part because his shoulder got sore in the Australian final, which helped Federer grind through Nadal's service games in the fifth set.

Meanwhile, he's winning a high percentage of return points but hasn't converted those fully into breaks (see: only breaking Nicolas Mahut once on the Miami mud). Here, he broke Edmund a whopping EIGHT times and was broken four times himself.

-Rafa's forehand definitely lost depth midway through, though it wasn't like his dark days, as he was still open to hitting into the deuce corner, including a couple winners, one big one coming in the last game or two. The confidence stuff comes in when he refuses to hit to that side pretty much at all. That said, I'd like to see him "pulverize" the cross court forehand like he was doing to start the year. More heat, less hook.

-Where he gets in trouble is similar to a basketball dilemma: when a bench gets a team back into the game, the coach has to decide whether to ride lesser players or go back to his talent that was previously ineffective. For Rafa, I think he sometimes commits so hard to riding out an opponent's hot streak that it makes matches dicey or at least look bad/complicated. And it usually works, like today. Edmund's super streaky forehand indeed cooled off in the third, though I wonder if Rafa took more initiative and attacked more if he could have won in two just as Djokovic escaped Edmund in Indian Wells.

-I think Nadal was holding back on serve today. In the second set, he saved a couple break points at 0-40 with rare bombs before getting broken. My guess is he wanted to use a safer serve to get into a rhythm from the baseline. Either way, he'll need to serve way better going forward.

-I was worried about his energy level with no days off, but he was back practicing right after the match, so hey, what do I know? The Zverev matchup is terrifying and I think he knows he'll need to be sharper, even with two wins over Sascha on hardcourts. If he can get past that, a QF against Schwartzman/Struff/cooled off Dimitrov is appealing. (Post-match: WOOF, Grigor. If only you'd played like this in Australia.)

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