Defensive Strategy in Tennis

I have been thinking about defensive strategy in tennis lately. The as the mantra goes "good defense beats good offense." But is this true in tennis?



In other sports, defense is fairly intuitive: in baseball your defense is in your pitching and fielding; in soccer, hockey, and basketball it's in stealing the ball/puck and defending the goal; in football and rugby it's tackling the other players before they reach a first down/touchdown.



In tennis, I think playing good defense is first defending your side of the net by getting to your opponent's shots and getting them back over the net. This is part of the style of play of Rafael Nadal, and it gets into the opponent's head, forcing them to go for more and more risky shots in order to win the point, and eventually they make mistakes. It's also labeled counterpunching.



But there is another style of defense I think, akin to good pitching in baseball. This style of defense is less thought about and talked about, but I think still very effective. You hit the ball in a way that makes it hard on your opponent to be aggressive. This involves, generally shots like low slice shots (Steffi Graf) that don't bounce high enough to give your oppenent much to work on. Also, hitting the ball deep into the court (anyone ever heard that from a tennis coach?) prevents your opponent from stepping up into the court, which would expand his/her angles for a shot. It can also involve hitting the ball more into the middle of the court for players that love creating angles from the corners or just in general hitting in a way that your opponent doesn't like (not enough pace, varied spins, moon-balls).



Federer is quite good at mixing up his shot selection, making you uncomfortable. And when combined with lethal offensive weapons, no wonder he's dominated men's tennis for four years.