After a spectacular 2017 season, Spaniard Rafael Nadal will be hoping he can bring his Grand Slam form into 2018 and pick where he left off by winning the Australian Open.
Nadal was beaten in last year’s final by his great rival Roger Federer. If he wants to improve that performance this time around he will have to make three key changes to his game to make sure he gives himself the best chance available.
First, he needs to avoid five-set matches as much as possible. Last year there were two Grand Slam tournaments he didn’t win: the Australian Open and Wimbledon and in both of them, he was knocked out in the back of a five-set match.
Nadal is very fit, so exhaustion is not an issue in those five-set matches, however, mental fatigue plays a bigger part.
The two Grand Slams that the Spanish player won in 2017 where the U.S Open and the French Open. Although he faced some big servers, like Stan Wawrinka, Juan Martin del Potro and Kevin Anderson he overcame his opponent because in neither of those tournaments he played a five-set match.
Since he doesn’t have a big serve Nadal relies heavily on his return game to defeat his opponents, which brings us to point number two on the list of things that he needs to change in order to win the Australian Open.
Nadal needs to look after his own serve if he wants to have a clear shot at winning the Aussie Open. In the U.S Final against Kevin Anderson Nadal did not get broken even once as he was brilliant on serve.
He has added a few miles per hour to his serve and made it a bit more aggressive and that probably helped him win that U.S Open in 2017.
He needs to bring that into this Australian Open, especially against the big servers if he wants to have a chance and not slip up at any stage of the tournament.
The third change that Nadal needs to do is find a new way to overcome Roger Federer. For years Nadal dominated Federer using his powering forehand against Federer’s weaker backhand.
Last year that all changed as they played four times and Federer won all four of them. In three of their matches, the Swiss absolutely dominated Nadal and it was during the Australian Open final where the Spanish player put up much of a fight.
Federer seems to have figured out Nadal, so now he must go back to the drawing board with his coaches and hope they can spot a weakness in Federer’s game that he can exploit because if Nadal is going to avenge last year loss they must come up with some new plan to beat the Swiss.
We must wait until they meet in 2018 to see if Nadal and his coaches have come up with something during the offseason.
