Chapter 416 Forced error

“0:40”.

In the first game, Gao Wen ran into trouble.

At this year's US Open, as a wildcard player ranked outside 150 in the world, today is the third time that Gawain has landed on the Arthur Ashe Stadium. Such treatment is comparable to that of Djokovic and Federer - although everything was a coincidence. Logically, Gawain should be more adapted to the court than Kei Nishikori.

After all, this was Kei Nishikori's first time entering Arthur Ashe Stadium.

However, lack of competition experience is still Gao Wen's shortcoming. In the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam tournament, what is truly different is the atmosphere, the attention, the weight of the game, etc., rather than the influence of the venue itself. These invisible and intangible pressures come from all directions and fall on his shoulders.

The sunlight at three o'clock in the afternoon was particularly dazzling and scorching. Every time I tossed the ball, I could feel a golden halo covering my eyes. Moreover, due to the structure of the Arthur Ashe Stadium, the light above my head was uneven, and my vision was a little blurred between the interweaving of light and shadow. The whole serving action was always not smooth.

Most importantly, Kei Nishikori was very active in the opening stages, putting tremendous pressure on Gao Wen.

Why is Kei Nishikori's ability to break serve so strong? In addition to his ability to attack and control the rhythm, Kei Nishikori's touch and ball sense are actually very outstanding. His forehand and backhand lack the instantaneous explosive power of attacking, but his wrapping and pushing of the tennis ball are very soft and light. Not only does he perform well in leveraging the force, but his ability to change the line is also top-notch.

Watching Kei Nishikori's games, he doesn't seem to exert any special force in each shot, or even if he actively exerts force, it is difficult to see the penetration. At least it is obviously different from the instantaneous burst of hitting feeling like Wawrinka and Kyrgios; but his ability to change line and control the ball is excellent, which also lays the foundation for his hitting line layout.

Moreover, Kei Nishikori's way of attacking the ball is also full of rich variations:

Sometimes, the ball is wrapped with topspin to create an arc, pressing deep into the baseline to control the opponent's position; sometimes, a flat shot is made to compress the rhythm of the ball and limit the opponent's hitting space; sometimes, the skateboard changes line, not pursuing a large angle to score directly, but disrupting the opponent's prediction through unexpected line changes.

In other words, Kei Nishikori does not need to exert force himself, nor is he afraid of his opponent exerting force. Instead, he can cleverly control the rhythm and create advantages through layout.

Therefore, the rhythm of Kei Nishikori's games is often very special. It is not the kind that is fast and slow, with great ups and downs, but a slight change of speed and then returns to calm. The changes in details are always causing interference. Moreover, Kei Nishikori has very light and agile feet, and his arrival rate on both offense and defense is very high.

Therefore, in the receiving game, Kei Nishikori is very competitive, and he will try to set up a layout from the moment he receives the serve.

On the other hand, because the serve is soft, and the return action after the serve is complicated and slow, the initiative of hitting the ball in the first and second shots will often be in the hands of the opponent, and naturally Kei Nishikori will fall into a passive position.

There is no doubt that this is indeed a player with rare talent.

Don't forget that according to the original historical trajectory, Kei Nishikori defeated Wawrinka and Djokovic all the way to reach the final. Although his mentality was unbalanced on the final stage and his entire performance was completely abnormal, so that the game was one-sided and there was almost no confrontation throughout the game, Kei Nishikori still proved himself through his outstanding performance.

In the first game, Kei Nishikori showed his full preparation.

Obviously, after the upset victory over Wawrinka, Gao Wen has been completely exposed to everyone. No one will rely on "luck" to see Gao Wen's advancement anymore. I'm afraid that Michael Chang has also conducted in-depth research on Gao Wen's technical style. Kei Nishikori showed his belief in winning from the beginning.

First of all, Kei Nishikori was very aggressive in receiving the serve.

Affected by the sunlight and a little slow start, Gao Wen's first serve was indeed not at its best.

Secondly, Kei Nishikori consciously took advantage of the rhythm.

His strokes are not like Kyrgios', who always likes to exert force and press forward with the ball; instead, he consciously takes a half step or a step forward when hitting the ball. In this way, he improves the rhythm of the strokes, shortens the reaction time of the ball, and creates pressure.

Finally, Kei Nishikori's tactical intention to suppress Takafumi's forehand in the opening stage was obvious.

As for Kei Nishikori himself, his forehand and backhand are balanced. Although he does not have the ability to actively exert force on both sides, both sides are very even and stable. Moreover, Kei Nishikori's hitting movements are very clean and concise, which also means that the opponent has relatively less time to predict.

It is clear that Chang has developed a strategy for Kei Nishikori, using the fast tempo to suppress and destroy Gao Wen's forehand stability.

Compared to his backhand, Gao Wen's forehand is indeed more unstable.

A Nishikori winner, two Gawain errors, and then three break points—

In the technical statistics of tennis games, there is a data: Unforced-Error (UE for short).

To explain it literally, it means an active mistake without pressure, that is, the player's own active mistake causes the return ball to go into the net or out of bounds, and it has nothing to do with the opponent's pressure.

The reason for this statistic is that tennis is a sport of confrontation between two sides. Pressure and confrontation are the main content throughout the game, so errors can be divided into "forced errors" and "unforced errors". The former represents the opponent's outstanding performance, and the latter represents one's own mistakes and giving away points.

But the problem is that the confrontation in a tennis match is not that simple.

The latest novel is published first on Liu9shuba!

Normally, it is very difficult to accurately judge which shots are "forced" and which are not, because every shot is a process of exerting pressure on the opponent. Putting aside the quality of the ball, the invisible details hidden in the shot, such as rotation, tail power, change of direction, assault, speed-up, calculation, etc., are all important components of the round ball.

From the perspective of technical statistics, the two mistakes at the beginning were officially counted as "unforced errors" by Gao Wen, because both were mistakes made by Gao Wen in the active attack, while Kei Nishikori was the one who was passively beaten.

But Gawain himself felt differently. No matter whether Nishikori was attacking or defending, the subtle changes in rhythm were interfering with Gawain's shots. To some extent, the pressure from Nishikori's return was always there, and his mistakes were caused by his inability to adapt to the pressure, which was an ability that Sarkeesian did not possess.

When facing Sarkeesian, Gawain easily defeated his opponent with endless changes, but facing Kei Nishikori, it was not that easy.

Just like in the last game against Wawrinka, everyone knows that Wawrinka's backhand attack should be limited, but not everyone can do it. The changes must break the routine and ensure quality, and also require perseverance.

Sure enough, it was an interesting game.

Two minutes later, although Gao Wen saved two break points in a row, on the third break point, Kei Nishikori still used a magical backhand one-handed rebound to hit the ball in a straight line to score the winning point.

At the beginning, the break was successful!

(End of this chapter)