Anatomy of a Loss

Reflecting on Swiatek vs Andreeva and how we analyse a tennis match

Source: The Guardian

The Netflix tennis documentary series Break Point has been analysed and criticised extensively since its release, but the thing that frustrated me most wasn’t the obvious issues everyone was talking about.

Rather, what I found most egregious was the way the series framed the sport and tried to analyse matches.

In an episode focused on Matteo Berrettini’s run to the semifinals of the Australian Open, we see extensive highlights and match footage of his loss to Rafael Nadal.

Early on in this sequence, we see Berrettini hit a backhand slice down the line to Nadal’s (lefthanded) backhand.

When Nadal reaches the ball, he doesn’t go to hit a backhand. Instead, the lack of pace on the slice gives him time to run round his backhand and hit an inside out forehand winner cross court.

This point encapsulated a core part of this matchup and why Berrettini was going to have a horrible evening.

Berrettini has a relatively weak righthanded backhand going into Nadal’s huge lefthanded forehand.

Berrettini often uses the slice to defend his backhand, but Nadal’s forehand has enough racket head speed to generate pace off the ball anyway if the slice went cross court. If the slice went down the line as the Italian just tried, Nadal could still hit a forehand and dictate the rally.

Break Point, however, was not interested in exploring or explaining this tactical element it had just shown.

Instead, we hear Berrettini in voice over talk about how he’s feeling lost out there, he’s not focused; it’s all about how Nadal is mentally perfect, and he isn’t.

When Berrettini “locks in” so to speak, suddenly we get a montage of winners from him, and he’s won the third set. The momentum swings of the match were, according to the documentary, about which player had the mental edge, nothing technical or tactical.

This framing of tennis as a sport won and lost in the mind is not entirely unique to Break Point, of course. In many ways it was the culmination of a concerted effort from media and players to highlight its importance in who won or lost matches.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. By being an individual sport with a unique scoring system, tennis matches often highlight the aspects of pressure in a match more clearly than other sports might.

There is no running down the clock or relying on teammates to help you through. At every pressure point there is a player with something to gain and an opponent with something to lose.

How often does a lower ranked player look incredible until they have a lead in a deciding set? How many times has someone suddenly looked extremely nervous when serving out a match? This is at the heart of tennis.

But getting too wrapped up in this fascination can sometimes make us lose sight of the other equally important aspects of the sport: what the players are actually doing on the court with their rackets.

At times, analysis can get boiled down to lazy football punditry where the team who won just “wanted it more” and “fought harder” for the win.

Matchups, technical elements and tactics are just as important to the outcome of a tennis match as who showed more mental strength.

Mirra Andreeva’s 7-6(1), 1-6, 6-3 win over Iga Swiatek in the semifinals of Indian Wells last month brought forth plenty of discussion about mentality.

Much focus from a Swiatek perspective has been about her lack of mental strength and being “unclutch” throughout the match.

She won more points than Andreeva overall and was consistently winning points in the Russian’s return games, often getting to 0-30 or 30-30 but losing the game.

Swiatek also ended up getting a bit bratty towards the end of the match. At one point late on, she received a ball from one of the ball boys and promptly smashed it into the ground with her racket prompting a boo from the crowd.

You would think Swiatek was the 17-year-old the way she was acting and struggling to hold it together towards the end, not the five-time grand slam champion.

We will talk about the mental components of this loss for Swiatek because they are significant, but I do think that only focusing on her confidence, her inability to be “clutch” in big moments ignores some of the deeper trends that were exposed once again by Andreeva.

Most notably, I believe this ignores consistent problems with her serve and her returning that more elite players are beginning to expose and prey on.

This is a tactical analysis of an Iga Swiatek loss, but it is also a case study of how we talk about tennis and analyse the sport.

I’m hoping to show how focusing solely on one element of the sport leaves us with an incomplete picture of a match and where it was won and lost.

As we’ll see, this can include focusing too much on my beloved tactical elements, too.

I want to start by looking at the Swiatek return position and why it caused her problems in this matchup with Andreeva.

Swiatek is notable as an extremely good returner, but also a very aggressive one. She stands much closer to the baseline than other players to return both first and second serve.

Here is Swiatek’s return position for a first serve against Andreeva:

Just for comparison, here’s Aryna Sabalenka’s return position for a first serve against Andreeva from the final:

Finally, for one more example, here’s Coco Gauff returning a first serve:

Swiatek’s much more aggressive positioning closer to the baseline is often a strength for her.

Because she returns so well, it allows her to take the time away from her opponents as they land from the serve.

Being so close to the baseline also means that Swiatek can take up a position on the baseline for her next shot, complimenting her front-foot, aggressive tennis which lets her dictate the rally.

This is a tactical element that’s not unique to Swiatek. In Miami she was asked about her aggressive return position and discussed the differences between returning/style between the ATP and WTA:

“Guys are taking a bit more time to build the rally and figure out the tactical side. Sometimes in WTA, girls are like hitting the first ball possible stepping in, stepping in, stepping in.”

(A massive shoutout here to Vansh working with TennisONE for asking this question to Swiatek, he was on amazing form with really fascinating questions to a lot of players during Miami.)

That’s all well and good in theory, but against the very best serves, this stepping in runs into problems.

In the first set in particular, Andreeva’s serve was extremely effective. She won an incredible 88% of first serve points. She lost just three (3) points played when she landed her first serve in.

Here’s an example of one of those points at 30-30 on serve. This is a “pressure point”- a point that will lead to a break point if Swiatek wins it.

The Russian was impressively clutch on these points with Swiatek rarely converting these points to actually break serve.

Andreeva hits a 118mph serve on the line. Swiatek just about gets a racket on it, but the ball naturally loops up for an easy smash put away for the teenager.

Now, obviously, this is an amazing serve. To pull out a serve at that speed and precision under pressure is mighty impressive and one of the reasons Andreeva has already managed to win two WTA1000 titles this year.

But at the same time, Swiatek doesn’t give herself much of a chance to get into the points when she’s standing this close to the baseline against that serve.

There were plenty of examples from the first set where Swiatek was making compromised first serve returns because her shot was being rushed.

She occasionally used chip or block returns, which has been a smart addition to her arsenal, but this was more of a last resort than a common strategy.

Essentially, Swiatek wanted to go for her standard swings on return, but that isn’t possible when your opponent is consistently serving in the 115-120mph range.

Admittedly, Andreeva’s serving performance did drop off after that first set; she won 36.4% of first serve points in the third set, just 4/11.

It might be fair, then, for Swiatek feel like she could just ride out the wave on Andreeva’s impeccable serving and capitalise when it became less effective.

The aggressive return position isn’t so much of an issue when you’re a) facing less first serves, and b) those first serves are less potent than before.

It’s also true to say that a deeper return position won’t necessarily guarantee that Swiatek will win the point. As Swiatek’s press conference answer points out, it’s an effort to take control of the point as early as possible.

A deeper return position, then, naturally cedes more control to Andreeva and allows the Russian to dictate the rally.

Along with this, it remains true that a 118mph serve down the middle of the court is pretty hard to return! A deeper return position doesn’t mean instant results and that she’ll be landing all these returns.

On the other hand, you can’t win the point if you miss the return. If your positioning means you’re more likely to miss the return, that starts to become an issue.

This is hardly the first time this has been a problem for Swiatek against elite servers, either. As I’ve written about elsewhere, she has struggled on return against the likes of Elena Rybakina in the past.

Rybakina has similarly been able to survive pressure points on her serve with big first serves that Swiatek misses or hits a compromised return on.

Swiatek’s aggressive returning isn’t an issue in every match she plays of course. Against most opponents, it’s a benefit more than a hinderance. During this Indian Wells run for example, she was able to very reliably break opponents serve at will.

Against a select few players however, it has become something of an issue at times. I believe Swiatek ought to show the willingness to adapt and react to what her opponent’s doing more often.

She needs to be able to move back when Andreeva is serving as big as she was in the first set. As her serving performance started to somewhat decline, she could happily go back to her normal aggressive position.

Swiatek lost many of the pressure points in the first set because of huge Andreeva serves she had no chance of effectively returning from where she was stood.

Had she been able to more reliably get those balls in play, maybe she would have got more than the single break she managed to finally clinch at 5-4. She might have been able to win this match in two sets, in fact.

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That return position and struggle to break the Andreeva serve also has an impact on Swiatek’s own serving. A strong serving opponent changes the serve/return dynamic of the match, putting more pressure on Swiatek’s serve.

Swiatek is, relatively speaking, a better returner than she is a server. She has repeatedly topped the tour for serve points won over the last few years, but the quality of her serve itself is weaker compared to her rivals at the top of the game like Sabalenka, Gauff or Rybakina.

She’s able to cover that serve with an incredible ground game as well as her exceptional returning. Even if Swiatek is under pressure on serve, it’s not necessarily an issue against most players because she’s so dominant on return. She will always have a chance in return games and be able to break back.

However, she doesn’t have that luxury when playing someone serving as well as Andreeva was in that semifinal.

When Swiatek is struggling to break the opponent’s serve, there is much more pressure on her to hold. In these types of matches, one break could end up deciding the set.

Swiatek’s serve isn’t great and it hasn’t significantly improved over the years. She made changes to her service motion in 2024 which had some help in big matches such as the Madrid final, but it’s not significantly better than it was in, say, 2022.

Fundamentally, Swiatek still struggles for pace on the serve as well as accuracy. She cannot consistently spot serve, and her body serves don’t hit nearly as hard as they could.

While Swiatek isn’t the best server, she does take a lot of confidence from having a good serving day. If she is struggling for rhythm and consistency on first serve, she can look much more vulnerable off the ground than normal.

Her second serve can be somewhat vulnerable and as she herself has said, the girls on the WTA are always trying to step in and smack a return winner.

Swiatek’s first serve percentage was ok against Andreeva sitting at 60% for the match. Andreeva wasn’t trying to attack every second serve like prime Caroline Garcia, either.

The issue, then, was less the serving performance on the day and more the state of her serve in a broader sense. Swiatek didn’t serve awfully, but a mediocre serve performance still puts her under much more pressure than it could.

It feels like a particularly stark and damning contrast with Andreeva, who at 17 already has a far more potent serve than a 23-year-old with five grand slam titles.

Players are always improving, and if your game starts to stagnate it can become a bigger issue than it was a couple years ago even if it hasn’t “changed” all that much.

While I broadly think you could say Swiatek served “ok” during the match, her serve did let her down in certain key moments such as her double fault at 1-1, 40-40 in the third set. This led to one of several breaks for Andreeva in the final set.

Her serve deserted her in one of the crucial moments of the match, contributing to killing the momentum she had just built up in the second set.

Overall, then, I think you can view this loss for Swiatek as certain chinks in her armour being exposed and exploited more ruthlessly than in the past.

Andreeva played a really good match, just as she did in Dubai in February. It’s no surprise she’s already in the top 10 when she’s managed to tough out three-setters against Swiatek, Rybakina and world number 1 Sabalenka.

The Russian is already becoming an elite level player and will give Swiatek a real headache in the future if she can’t find solutions to the problems posed to her.

With a more pragmatic return position and a better-quality serve, I think Swiatek would have had a much better chance of winning this match.

On the other hand, I don’t think it’s wrong to highlight the mental flaws from Swiatek in this match. This was certainly winnable for her, regardless of tactical issues.

Let’s think back to that double fault early in the third set. Sure, that’s a serve, technical, issue, but it’s also her beginning to buckle under pressure.

I would argue that that’s a mental issue as much as it is a problem with her game.

Discussing her serve or return position doesn’t factor in how well she played in the second set and how quickly the third set got away from her despite the momentum she had behind her.

Once Andreeva regrouped and began to ask questions of Swiatek again, the Pole seriously faltered and fell away completely. I’m not sure you can explain that away as tactics.

A line of thinking I’m very sympathetic to is comparing this version of Swiatek to her in 2022 or 2024. Would she lose this match in either of those years?

There aren’t significant differences in her game between now and then; her serve is no better nor worse, she isn’t lacking variety she had in those two seasons, and she returns from the same position.

The primary difference between those seasons and this version of Swiatek is confidence. She used to trust her game far more; she was less uncertain of herself when she was under pressure or behind in matches.

While many of the pressure points in Andreeva’s service games were won by the Russian with big serves or perfect winners, there were plenty of misses from Swiatek that felt uncharacteristic.

Her forehand and her backhand haven’t dramatically changed, she’s not regressed, there’s no breakdown in her technique. Swiatek just missed more shots than she used to.

That’s not tactics or technique. If we are able to place some exact reason, it’s more likely to be mental.

Less than a year ago Swiatek was pulling off multiple big wins from match point down. She saved multiple championship points in the Madrid final against Sabalenka and saved match point in the second round of Roland Garros against Naomi Osaka.

The Osaka match in particular feels like a useful comparison point when discussing some of Swiatek’s weaknesses, because the same issues were on show in that match as this loss in Indian Wells.

Osaka was ruthlessly punishing Swiatek’s second serve, putting huge pressure on the Pole with aggressive return winners.

She killed her confidence on serve completely, especially in the second set which Osaka won 6-1.

On return, Swiatek looked similarly naïve standing so close to the baseline when huge serves were coming at her. Even when she was getting the ball back in play, her shots were often rushed and subpar.

The refusal to step back was clearly hurting her; she was able to generate plenty of break points in the third set but struggled to ever take any of those chances.

And yet despite those issues on serve and on return, she mounted a comeback against Osaka.

The result didn’t change the fact she had tactical weaknesses in the match, but clearly, they were and are not such big problems that they stop her from beating these players that can exploit them.

It wasn’t that long ago that she was facing immense pressure and coping, remaining calm in the big moments and holding her composure. She certainly wasn’t smashing a ball into the stands in anger, for example.

Now however, it does seem that when she gets seriously challenged, she panics and gets flustered more easily than before. One only needs to look to her most recent loss in Miami for an example of this.

Against wildcard Alexandra Eala, Swiatek looked completely off the pace, barely moving for balls at times and throwing her arms up towards her team in frustration constantly.

This outward show of frustration is very understandable- who wouldn’t be really annoyed that they can’t land a good serve or a decent forehand? - but also very unlike Swiatek.

I think it would be fair to say that she plays at her best when she’s more composed and we’re not seeing that frustration etched on her face. She is losing the mental edge in more matches this year than she did in the past.

Against Andreeva, Swiatek played the pressure points worse. This lost her the match.

Andreeva got more “free” or easy points from Swiatek’s return position, Swiatek was under more pressure than she could have otherwise been on serve, but these are not entirely decisive factors.

There were still plenty of opportunities for her to take the match despite these elements going against her.

Tactics can’t explain Swiatek’s form disappearing when placed under pressure. Her capitulation in the third set was avoidable through changes she could have made to her game, but that wasn’t necessary to get her over the line on the day.

However, I would still stress that even if there is a clear mental component to this loss, that doesn’t change the importance of tactical and technical factors.

Being “unclutch” doesn’t deny the fact that her return position lost her more points than it won in the first set.

Her late frustrations and fall away do not change the fact that she would have been under less pressure on serve and more comfortable in the serve/return dynamic if she had a better-quality serve.

The 2024 version of Swiatek probably wins this match, but that doesn’t mean that either version of the player couldn’t have won it more comfortably and done so with better process.

She might be able to win despite her weaknesses, but that doesn’t mean that she can just ignore them.

These flaws were always there, they were just being covered by other areas of Swiatek’s excellent game.

Perhaps in future, improvements to her serve for example might help cover these other areas of her game that aren’t working as well as they used to.

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Ultimately, I think any analysis of a match can’t just be considering one element or factor over another.

I think more often than not, analysis defaults to just focusing on the “mental” aspects of the sport. However, analysis that only focuses on the tennis itself can sometimes miss the point in the same way.

As an example, think about Novak Djokovic’s win over Carlos Alcaraz at the Australian Open earlier this year.

One could easily zoom in on the tactical elements such as Djokovic’s move to be much more aggressive, especially when returning, in the second set, or Alcaraz on return getting caught out by wide serves to his forehand.

That analysis, however, would ignore the fact that Alcaraz clearly got distracted and unsettled by Djokovic’s shift from being visibly injured to still playing on at a very high level.

Simultaneously, focusing so much on the fact that Alcaraz lost his head would ignore the importance of Djokovic’s change in approach and how he punished Alcaraz’s return position at times among other things.

My very boring conclusion then, is that nuance is the based way to approach analysing sport.

We can still say one element is more important than the other in each case- these Swiatek and Alcaraz examples specifically are probably both more mental than tactical losses overall- but all these factors still exist and contribute to the result.

It might seem a bit ironic to start an article with the radical alternative view that it wasn’t a mental collapse that cost Swiatek the match and end it by arguing somewhat the opposite.

While my final conclusion probably comes down that way, I think the broader theme I want to leave you with is that we’re reaching that conclusion with a more nuanced, considered understanding of what happened.

What’s important when it comes to analysis is the process. We might reach the same conclusions as cliched punditry, but we’re doing so in a much more systematic and rigorous way.

I chose Swiatek vs Andreeva because I think it’s quite a significant match from Indian Wells and has a lot to take from it, but you could do this with any big result.

Tennis will always be a sport where the mental battle is much more prominent and visible than elsewhere.

It helps that it is much easier to see and be able to comment on someone’s nerves than their bad technique.

I as an armchair expert can point to specifics things that show someone is feeling the pressure, like someone hitting more errors or becoming more passive.

I cannot really do the same thing for technique. I can tell you that Iga Swiatek’s serve isn’t that good, but I can’t give you a point-by-point breakdown of what’s wrong with her technique and how she needs to change that.

I think this is part of why we’re so caught up in the mental edge of a match more often than not. We can all see and discuss that compared to tactics and technique creating something of a barrier to entry.

Regardless of that, I don’t think analysing what’s going on between the ears is beyond even the armchair experts like me.

Break Point might have you believe that mental composure is the only thing required to win a big tennis match, but that’s not true, and now you know that too.

Match screenshots from the WTA YouTube Channel