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Craig O’Shannessy, strategy analyst for the ATP Tour, reveals how Tsitsipas defeated Thiem at the Nitto ATP Finals.

The role of the forehand is to hit winners and make the opponent miss. The role of the backhand is to not miss, and that’s exactly the script that Stefanos Tsitsipas followed to win the Nitto ATP Finals in London on Sunday evening.

Tsitsipas defeated Dominic Thiem 6-7(6), 6-2, 7-6(4) with his run-around forehand dominating baseline exchanges, while his backhand withstood the firepower from Thiem’s heavy groundstrokes.

Tsitsipas, being right-handed, naturally hits forehands that are directed through the Deuce court. But the Greek also looked to hit as many forehands as possible from the Ad court, which is where the majority of his winners originated from. The Ad court was where Tsitsipas’ run-around forehand and backhand ultimately won him the match. 

In the Ad court when hitting forehands, Tsitsipas hit seven winners and committed just four errors from 56 shots. In the Deuce court, he could only manage four winners while yielding 17 errors from 78 forehands. Any way you slice it, the run-around forehand in the Ad court performed way better than forehands standing in the Deuce court.

When Tsitsipas did hit backhands in the match, the goal was to miss as little as possible. Goal achieved. During a 35-minute period that took in all of the second set and five points of the opening game of the third set, Tsitsipas put 19 straight backhands in the court, while Thiem committed 11 errors from 40 backhands. 

This was a pivotal part of the match that helped Tsitsipas wrestle control of the momentum after dropping the opening set, and helped set the stage for a thrilling tie-break at the end of the third set. 

The Greek made his last nine backhands in a row for the match, including all seven he struck in the third-set tie-break. Thiem could not match Tsitsipas blow-for-blow, as he crucially missed two of the seven backhands in the third set tie-break.

Overall, they hit almost the exact same number of backhand groundstrokes for the match – Tsitsipas 93 – Thiem 95. The backhand winners were low (Tsitsipas 2 / Thiem 3), but the errors were telling. Tsitsipas only committed 15 backhand errors for the match, while Thiem coughed up 26. 

In the opening set, both players hit 34 backhand groundstrokes each, with Tsitsipas averaging one error out of every 4.3 backhands (8/34). That was much better than Thiem’s average of one backhand error from every 2.8 shots (12/34). In set two, Tsitsipas didn’t commit a backhand error, while Thiem missed five of 10.

A third area that Tsitsipas dominated for the match was serving down the T with his first serve. Overall, he won 93 per cent (26/28) serving first serves down the T for the match – winning 16/16 in the Ad court and 10/12 in the Deuce court.

Tsitsipas earned $2,656,000 in prize money and 1,300 ATP ranking points for the week, ending the season with a 54-25 match record. The cream on the cake for the 21-year-old Greek is that he first came to the Nitto ATP Finals in 2016 as a hitting partner for field of players, which included Thiem. Now he is the champion

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