Statistics show Nadal is ramping up forehand as defensive skills decline

At 37 years old and having dealt with a slew of injuries throughout his career, Rafael Nadal can no longer play the same kind of defence as he did during his heyday.

That, of course, is an obvious statement. However, there are some interesting statistics — taken from Nadal’s last three Rome appearances that confirm the reality of the situation.

Here are the four categories:

Steal score: How often a player wins a point during which they were on defence

Defensive in %: Percentage of shots hit from a defensive position

Phase up from defence: Percentage of shots from a defensive position that result in no worse than a position of neutrality

Winning play from defence: Percentage of shots from a defensive position that result in an offensive position

Nadal’s numbers in those departments — calculated only in Rome — have become progressively worse. His steal score went from 48 percent in 2019 to 44 percent in 2021 and to 36 percent in 2024. He made only 71.6 percent of his defensive shots in his two Rome matches this year — much lower than his 79.4 and 82.8 percentages, respectively, in 2019 and 2021. As you can see blow, Nadal also turned defence into offence at a much lower rate this season.

Perhaps to compensate for the decline in his defence, Nadal made a commitment to increase his forehand power in Rome. The Spaniard’s average MPH on the forehand side was 76 — higher than his 73 in Barcelona and 72 Madrid. He also hit that shot with far more RPMs and did a slightly better job of opening the court with forehand width.

Unsurprisingly, however, more errors came with the increased aggression. The 22-time Grand Slam champion made just 84 percent of his forehands in Rome compared to 87 percent in Barcelona and 90 percent in Madrid.

NADAL FEELING IN HIS BEST SHAPE OF THE SEASON

While Nadal’s defence underwhelmed earlier in this clay-court swing, he hopes a different version of himself will be on display at Roland-Garros.

“Physically I feel better, honestly,” the 14-time winner of this event said during his pre-tournament press conference on Saturday. “I am improving in different ways. I have less limitations that three, four weeks ago without a doubt…. I am having a good week of practices. I probably will say (this) is the first week since I came back playing tennis that I am able to run the proper way without having a lot of limitations. That’s encouraging (for) me.”

Does that mean we will see better defence from him than we saw in Rome? It’s possible.

“It’s a different tournament — a different feeling completely. But I progressed. In the practices without a doubt I improved — especially in terms of movements. So I don’t feel the limitations that I felt in Rome interms of running (to) both sides.”

Nadal will try to take that from practice to the match court when he faces Alexander Zverev in the French Open first round on Monday.

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