Why Federer is so dominant on indoor hard courts. (According to me..)

Roger finished 2011 season with a high note winning at O2 arena, after finishing a season without a grand  slam  this year, He is 17-0  after the US open, was just a shot away then, going to the US OPEN FINALS last month.

What makes Roger so dominant on indoor hard courts is primarily speed of the courts. Usually indoor hard courts are pretty fast with a surface of lower bounce, Paris masters 2011 was the exception though.

Top spin always gives Roger some trouble, his matches with Nadal were the examples of  severity of  the trouble, even this year O2 arena match with Ferrer , he had some trouble with topspin in the first set.

But hard courts usually do not give extra juice to topspin as a result ball  does not jump that high and it sits well on attacking (firing)  line  of Roger's specially on Backhand side.

·         If you have been watching matches closely this year (last couple of weeks) , Roger was standing right on the baseline and reluctant to fall behind the baseline, most of deep balls he usually plays half volley or on the rise . It does two things in my opinion ; one takes time away from your opponent and you are still standing on base line and you have an upper hand in the rallies. 

·         But if you watch him on grass or clay he cannot guard baseline that dominantly because of uneven bounce of those courts. So low bounce of these courts and not so frequent uneven bounce of these hard courts certainly help him in that sense.

·         Another reason is backhand slice, which he did not use effectively this year but specially in Paris and O2 courts, backhand slice stayed very low and hard to attack, which he used very effectively  this year’s ATP finals.  

·         Court positioning, as I mentioned earlier Roger was standing near the baseline and tried to stay there as much as he could. It also gave him ample time to crowd the net quickly for volleys.

·         His backhand was crisp in all these three tournaments Basel, Paris and London ATP finals 2011.

·         He served very high percentage first serve in last three weeks, which actually gave him some free points on serve. All in all , his forehand was lethal and serves were good enough, which were points of concern this year especially in pressure situation.

Roger mixed his backhand shot selction in the O2 finals , with backhand topspin and slice ofcourse , but in second set against Joe's 135 mph first serve backhand topspin did not work(I Think), so in third set all the retun of serve were backhand slices (worked like a charm I guess) , so may be some work needed in that front for Roger but this is only my observation.

Federer looked really rejuvenated and looked his oldself now, watch out for 2012..King is back.