A lot of controversy and crazy stories around the 2022 Australian Open edition – but no reasons to skip the Impacting Tennis racket match up analysis of another GS final.
The 2022 AO Final will be featuring Rafael Nadal and Daniil Medvedev. We have covered Nadal and his racket set up quite a bit on this site, so if you are a regular I’ll be repeating my self. In fact I have already covered this exact matchup. The Russian Daniil Medvedev, who is interesting to me, due to the fact that he is one of the few younger players, who play with a racket heavy enough and well set up, to be consistent enough to bother the biggest names of our sport. Daniil already spoiled the plan to reach the eluded 21 st. grand slam at the US open last year, but can he do it again? Did something change since the US open finals when he faced Nadal and lost? One thing is for sure, Daniil now knows hot to win a grand slam and Nadal is looking to leap past Djokovic and Federer.
Now, about Daniil’s racket. His racket a while back before he switched to the Techifibre DC 305, was 353-355 g and roughly 32 cm balance, both strung. I think it’s safe to assume he has them weighted up to the same specs, especially judging by some pictures that I recently saw, which show some of his lead placement. His playstyle and stroke mechanic also suggest that.
First let’s take a look at the Mass, Balance and Swingweight comparison.
Rafael Nadal with a higher swingweight, mass and balance (less headlight) which means he needs more time to prepare and execute his strokes and needs to have perfect footwork and be balanced when he hits the ball. Daniil Medvedev has his racket set up a way more forgiving and easy to play with. More head light balance coupled with a hight twistweight of the DC 305 makes for a quite forgiving racket. This really shows at how consistent Medvedev is from the baseline. A big thing that he has going for him is also his efficiency. He doesn’t move as well as he seems to but is very efficient. He doesn’t need his legs perfectly in position every time, as his racket allows him to have very simple and effective strokes from every position. As long as he takes the racket back and gets it moving through the contact, the racket will do the rest for him.
Overall Nadal has a higher ceiling when it comes to the weight of the ball (a combination of spin and pace) because his racket is able to transfer more energy to the ball, but only when he is well-positioned and has the time to execute his strokes to achieve maximum racket head speed.
As expected Medvedev has a higher MGR/I, which also makes his racket more forgiving and better at controlling the depth of his balls especially on flatter shots.
As I mentioned before I believe Medvedev has everything ko keep up with the big players such as Nadal, and his racket plays a big role in that. I think that his game is inherently good enough to have a chance at taking down Nadal. He needs to keep Nadal deep enough consistently and not give him angles and high balls. His game is similar to Djokovic, who also troubles Nadal on a regular basis. His racket set up is just a bit more efficient and forgiving, but he is not as good of an athlete as Novak is.
The biggest question for me now is how Nadal is feeling and what will the conditions be like. We saw Nadal struggling with heat in previous rounds, and that might bother him more as he spends more energy while playing.
I believe we will have a real match on our hand and I’m excited to see if Nadal can step up and get in front of the race for the most grand slam titles, or can Medvedev embrace the party-breaker role once again.
Remember that this is just the racket match-up analysis, and there are many other factors in play, but to me, the understanding of what the racket enables you to is the foundation of how you build your game and strategy around that.
I try to make the finals more interesting as you can observe the different rackets and strategies behind them at work. If you are interested in more racket specs that tour players use, check my database.