In upset, Vasek Pospisil shows attacking tennis is about persistence

Vasek Pospisil kept bricking volleys.

Serving for the first set at 5-4 against Andy Murray on Saturday, Pospisil ran to the net to put away an easy sitter on his forehand side, only to flip the ball five feet wide. A little later, he pushed an equally easy backhand volley into the alley, and flashed an incredulous smile in his coach’s direction. Then, late in the second set, Pospisil let a simple forehand volley drop too far, and ended up hitting that one wide, too. By now, he wasn’t smiling.

Instead, with the score 30-30 and his lead on the line, Pospisil took a deep breath and  rushed the net behind his serve again. This time he was forced to bend down for a much more difficult low ball. Rather than try to win the point with one shot, he punched a safe, controlled forehand volley into the open court. It wasn’t placed perfectly, but it was good enough to force Murray to come up with a backhand pass on the run. Despite being one of the game’s premier baseline artists, the ATP’s No. 1 couldn’t do it. The set was saved. Fifteen minutes later, 26-year-old Pospisil had notched the biggest win of his career, 6-4, 7-6 (5).

“He’s the best player in the world,” an exultant Pospisil said after winning for the first time in five tries against Murray. “I knew I had to play the perfect match.”

That’s the thing, though. Pospisil didn’t have to play the perfect match to beat Murray. He bricked those volleys, he laughed at himself, he shook his head in exasperation, but he still won. And that’s the way it works when you rush the net: It’s persistence, not perfection, that matters most.

Serve and volley tennis is about positioning, not shot making. It’s about forcing errors from your opponent, not hitting winners yourself. As Ken Rosewall used to say, if I can get to the net, I’ll win seven of 10 points without having to do anything special. No one thinks that way anymore, but the idea can still hold true. Passing shots that hook into the corner for winners are spectacular, and they get replayed countless times in highlight reels. But they’re not the norm. Even the best defenders of 2017, with their powerful swings and polyester strings, miss them more often than they make them.

After four straight losses to one of those great defenders, Pospisil knew he had to make Murray hit as many difficult passes as he could.

“I wanted to bring different tactics,” he told Tennis Channel. “I didn’t want to give him the same look. I wanted to put pressure, coming to the net, which is my strength. Trying not to give him too many angles.

“I didn’t want him to groove at the baseline.”

Pospisil never let him. The 6’4” Canadian is an unusual hybrid; he’s a free-swinging baseliner with a two-handed backhand, but he also likes to rush the net, and is competent enough there to have won a Wimbledon doubles title.

Now, after a disastrous 2016—“it was almost like an early mid-life crisis,” Pospisil said—he has hired another Wimbledon doubles champ, Mark Woodforde, as his coach.

So far, so good. Pospisil looked rejuvenated during his two wins in a losing Davis Cup effort against Great Britain last month. And while he went down a break early against Murray, his positive energy was evident from the start of their match. Pospisil was determined to take his cuts.

According to Murray, though, it wasn’t Pospisil’s attacking play that made the difference, it was his consistency from the baseline.

“He’s always played that way,” Murray said of Pospisil’s net-rushing, “maybe he was doing it better this evening. He was maybe a bit more solid from the back of the court. That allows you and gives you more opportunities to come to the net. If you’re making mistakes in the first three, four shots of a rally, it’s not easy to come in on the correct ball.”

As for Murray’s own game, he was at a loss to explain why his run of futility continues at Indian Wells. This is the only mandatory Masters 1000 event he hasn’t won, and it’s the fourth time he’s lost his opener there. Murray laid most of the blame on his serve, and he was right, he had seven double faults, including one to hand over a mini-break in the tiebreaker. But Murray was also tentative on his forehand; he left a lot of balls in the middle of the court, inviting Pospisil to come forward.

Murray won the title in Dubai two weeks ago, but this is his second high-profile defeat in 2017 to a hard-charging opponent. The first came at the (very good) hands of Mischa Zverev in Melbourne. At the time, that upset seemed explainable by the fact that the courts were a little quicker Down Under, and that Zverev put on a once-in-a-lifetime magic show at the net.

Murray’s loss in Indian Wells is a little more surprising because it can’t be attributed to either of those factors. The courts in Indian Wells are still  “grippy,” and the match was played in slow evening conditions. And while Pospisil was very good at the net, he wasn’t always pure magic up there.

Maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised. Maybe Pospisil showed us something we should have remembered all along. Net-rushing tennis doesn’t fail because the courts are too slow, or because the strings create too much spin, or because players use two-handed backhands. What makes attacking tennis succeed is the mindset. As Tennis Channel’s Paul Annacone, a player who spent almost every point of his career at the net, said of Pospisil’s tactics against Murray, “You’ve got to be clear, committed, and make him beat you.” You’ve got to take your lumps, in other words, and keep coming forward.

Pospisil may have felt he needed to be perfect to beat Murray, but he found out that what he really needed to be was persistent.

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