Getting used to Wimbledon without Roger Federer

Sergiy Stakhovsky, the giant-killing underdog. The 27-year-old pulled off one of the biggest shocks, only three days into the Championships. (Getty Images)

Every time you thought the occasion would get to the Ukrainian and lead to a bunch of nervy errors, he came up with the goods. He stood firm in the second set tie-breaker, and remained steady on the break points he faced at the start of the third.

Stakhovsky attacked at every opportunity, and rarely missed. After that first squandered match point, the whole world would have expected him to let Federer back into the match. But he didn’t, and he has the biggest victory of his career to show for it.

There’s no good reason why Stakhovsky should have had the belief that he could upset Federer in the second round of a Slam, but his play exemplified some of the most unwavering self-confidence ever seen from a journeyman on a big stage.

Stakovsky came to play right from the start, and refused to be cowed down by the magnitude of the task he had set out to accomplish. Was he emboldened by fellow journeyman Steve Darcis‘s victory over Rafael Nadal in the first round?

Possibly. But knowing that something is possible is one thing, and going about doing that thing is quite another.

Stakhovsky sensed pretty early in the match that Federer was finding it difficult to find his range on his passing shots, so he stuck to the attack-the-net strategy diligently. But as any performance analyst will tell you, success is not just about choosing the right strategy; it’s also about execution.

And did Stakhovsky execute!

He showed incredible finesse in carving the most delicate of drop volleys, and remarkable athleticism in lunging for the most difficult stab volleys. He was like a wall at the net, and as the match progressed you could almost feel Federer’s growing frustration at being unable to find a way past the Ukrainian.

Could Federer have done anything differently, apart from cutting down his errors on the big points? From where I was watching, he could maybe have used a little more variety on his backhand passing shots.

He repeatedly aimed straight for Stakhovsky’s body when the latter came in on Federer’s backhand, and the commentators expressed surprise on more than one occasion at Federer’s seemingly newfound strategy. But if you’ve watched Federer over the past couple of years, you’d know that this wasn’t exactly new.

For a while now Federer has eschewed line-grazing passing shots in favour of the safer body blows that cramp the opponent. It could be that this ploy is something that he genuinely believes will reap him richer rewards, but the likelier explanation is that as the years have gone by, he’s simply lost the precision to consistently find the lines off his backhand.

In any case, the strategy worked for brief periods in the first two sets, but cost him dearly towards the end. The effectiveness of the passing shot at the body relies on the opponent being unable to handle the pace of the shot; in other words, its success depends on the opponent making an error. And as Stakhovsky’s confidence grew, he refused to miss; no matter how hard Federer struck the passer (at one point he belted it so hard that Stakhovsky had to duck out of the way), the Ukrainian managed to put the ball back in play.

Federer expected Stakhovsky to miss – and I suppose we all did, to some extent – but amazingly, Stakhovsky didn’t. This was the very personification of lights-out offensive tennis. Only, it came from Stakhovsky’s racquet, not Federer’s.