'This allows Roger Federer to anticipate where the ball will go', says former player

• Tennis News
• Roger Federer

Many experts and experts have tried over the years to determine the reasons behind the very long domination of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. We are talking about perhaps the three strongest players of all time, capable of putting together 56 Grand Slam titles.

The Swiss phenomenon still leads the all-time ranking at an altitude of 20, but the Spaniard and the Serbian follow him at 19 and 17 Major respectively. Filippo Volandri, former World number 25 and current technical director of FIT, has rattled off some statistics that could help understand how the raw numbers do not clearly illustrate the strength of these three authentic legends.

Volandri on Roger Federer

"The impact of numbers on the game, when you know them well, can almost be shocking," said Volandri. "Imagine how many points Rafael Nadal wins, as a percentage of total points played. Going to the nose, it could be assumed that a champion like him wins at least 70%.

(But) in reality, he wins between 53 and 54%" - Filippo Volandri told LiveTennis. "Novak Djokovic wins between 54 and 56%, and the numbers are more or less the same for Roger Federer. This makes you think about the importance of the single point, how the best manage to win points on the court and for this reason we study "how" they manage to win," asserted Volandri.

"We analyse which areas the players are stationed in. We study how players move and how they move the game. A concrete example: how the service played out (to a right-hander's forehand) had almost disappeared but it is now back.

Roger Federer is a player who serves from the right, especially at deuce, to go out," Volandri said. "He does not choose this shot because he believes his opponent has a modest forehand but because he is aware that 80% of the responses, facing his first external match, return to the middle of the court.

This allows him to anticipate where the response ball will most likely go, so he turns to anticipate the forehand and look for the uncovered corner. It seems trivial but, there is actually a deep study behind it," the Italian added.

Since his rivals have gotten incredibly close to beating his record, Roger has to add more Slams to his collection. Unfortunately, he is not going to able to do that this year because he ended his season as he underwent a second knee surgery.