You watch him play and it feels he is gliding when moving around the court and it appears pleasing to your eyes whether forehand or singlehanded backhand. Ofcourse his reflexes at net are superb.
No doubt other are finding ways to defeat him more number of times in the recent times, but I still do not like their game. You see how they labour covering the baseline and play their shots with such immence power and hard hitting. To me this is the biggest difference between these players.
While going through the 2nd round interviews at Winbledon 2012 I am again amazed by Federes's analysis of others game:
Here is what Novak has to say about Fedex game:
Q. Talk more about Roger a little bit more. What it's like up there against him? Does that variety ever astound you?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Look, I can't talk about his game too much. He's going to talk about his game I think better than anybody else.
But he's I think playing really well for somebody that has been so dominant the last couple of years, and then he dropped to No. 3 of the world right now. You can still see the desire in him to come back to No. 1, which makes him very dangerous.
He's definitely one of the candidates to win every Grand Slam he plays on. There's no reason to think that he's underestimated or something. He's performing now in these last two rounds incredibly well. You can always expect Roger and Rafa to perform well, as they always do.
But, look, it's a Grand Slam. It's Wimbledon. We all want to win. We always need to believe we can do that.
Here what Federer says about Rafa's and Novak's game:
Q. Probably nobody's played Rafa and Novak more than you. Could you talk about their baseline games, their offense to defense, their weaponry?
ROGER FEDERER: What do you want me to say? Obviously Novak hits more flat. Don't know if you recognized that yet.
Rafa is a lefty, so that changes things around a bit.
I think both do like to play from the backhand corner with their forehand obviously is their strength, even though their backhand is very consistent.
They return in very different ways, which makes them very different to play against.
They're some of the best, if not the best, movers out there in the game, but they do move differently to one another, which is very interesting as well. It just goes to show how many different styles work on any different surface these days.
Like you say, I think they did turn defense into offense very quickly. I think the transition game today is so much more important than it might have been in the past where great offense was enough or great defense was enough on clay, for instance.
Today, I think the way we all play, we need to be able to create transition very quickly from defense to offense, and both of very good at that.
Q. How would you characterize the difference in their movement?
ROGER FEDERER: I don't know. Clay, I think they're very good, particularly Rafa. I think he's the best. Both slide with open stance on both sides, which was not seen before until maybe 10 or 15 years ago. They're not the ones that created it, but they do it on a regular basis very consistently than on hard court.
On grass, I guess the left had, the flick hand at the end helps. A great way of getting out of trouble and finding a good angle in a situation where you think they're out of the point.
So they're able to ‑ how do you say ‑ when the balance is not there, they still control their body and are able to flick it back and get back into the point, which is impressive.
Below are the links to their complete interview. I am not sure and hope I am not infringing any rules by copying the interview excerpt here.
Novak's 2nd round interview
Federer's 2nd round interview
