I was watching old Nadal matches the other night, the way I do way too often, and something hit me all over again.
It’s not the topspin. It’s not the lefty forehand. It’s not the fact that he can rip a winner from ten feet behind the baseline.
The real Nadal tennis strategy has nothing to do with any of that.
It’s something so simple that most players roll their eyes when I explain it to them. They nod along like “yeah, yeah, obviously” and then go play their very next match completely ignoring it.
So let’s fix that today.
Here are the three steps that make up this Nadal tennis strategy, and I promise you, every single one of them works at your level too.
Step one is identify your strength.
A lot of players assume their top strength has to be some big powerful weapon they can crush close to the lines. Sometimes that’s true. For most of us, it’s not.
Take me, for example. I’m a 4.5 player. I can hit my forehand hard, and I like hitting it hard, but some days it gets me into a world of trouble. My backhand, on the other hand, doesn’t look like much of anything. I slice almost everything. But I also rarely miss it.
So on plenty of days, my “boring” backhand slice is actually a bigger strength than my “impressive” forehand.
Your strength might be consistency. It might be court coverage. It might be your ability to change heights and depths. It might just be that you don’t get rattled when things go sideways.
Spend real time reflecting on this. Watch yourself on video if you can. If you don’t get clarity here, you’re always going to struggle to win consistently.
Step two is identify your opponent’s biggest weakness, and ideally you’re doing this during the warm-up.
Watch for shots they avoid hitting. Watch for them running around a backhand just to hit a forehand instead. Watch for them getting uncomfortable when the ball bounces high or drops low. Watch for them slicing everything instead of ever hitting topspin. Watch for them skipping the overhead entirely during warm-ups, because that usually means they don’t love it and probably aren’t planning on coming to net.
Also watch for jerky, awkward swing technique. It’s not a guarantee of weakness, but it often leads to one.
And here’s a small trick: purposefully change the heights, depths, and widths of your shots early on, even in the warm-up. Stay respectful about it, we’re not trying to win the warm-up, but poke around a little and see what falls apart.
Step three, and this is the heart of the whole Nadal tennis strategy, is create your SDP. Your Simple Deadly Plan.
Here’s Rafa’s, spelled out plainly. He’s a lefty with monstrous topspin who can crush his forehand. That’s the strength. Most of his opponents are right-handed with a stronger forehand and a weaker backhand, even someone like Roger Federer. That’s the weakness. So the plan becomes: the more crosscourt forehands Rafa can send to that weaker backhand, the better.
That’s it. That’s the genius. Stack a strength on top of a weakness and repeat it until it stops working.
Watch the 2017 Australian Open final. Second point of the match, Nadal already starts leaning on this. He hits a heavy backhand crosscourt to Federer’s backhand. Federer floats it back to the middle. Now Nadal has an inviting angle to go crosscourt with his forehand into open court. Instead, he goes down the line, straight back to Federer’s backhand again.
He does it again. And again.
Eventually Nadal gets stretched wide into his forehand corner, the kind of ball that would tempt most of us, myself included, to go for the flashy winner down the line. Instead, he stays disciplined and keeps working the same pattern.
Shot after shot, he leans on what he knows is the weaker side. Not because it’s exciting. Because it works.
Later in that same match, Nadal serves into the backhand on the ad side, gets a short ball, and has a clean 50/50 look, he could go to either corner. Announcers will always tell you the “textbook” play on a short ball is down the line. Geometrically, they’re right. There’s more open court that way too.
Nadal ignores all of it and goes crosscourt into the backhand anyway, even though it means covering more ground and even though it leaves him exposed if Federer reads it. Because making Federer hit one more backhand is worth more than the theoretically “better” shot.
I’m not telling you to copy Nadal’s exact plan, unless you also happen to be a lefty with elite timing. What I’m telling you to steal is the process. Identify your strength. Identify the weakness in front of you. Build your own Simple Deadly Plan. Then stick with it with the same stubborn discipline Nadal showed against one of the greatest forehands of all time.
Most players don’t lose matches because they lack a good enough plan. They lose because they abandon a good plan the moment it feels repetitive.
Don’t be that player. Pick your pattern, trust it, and rinse and repeat until your opponent has no answer left.
Your Coach,
-Ian
