Where Coric Dominated Tsitsipas To Claim The Cincinnati Crown

Borna Coric put Stefanos Tsitsipas in the backhand cage and threw away the key.

Coric defeated Tsitsipas 7-6(0), 6-2 in the Western & Southern Open final on Sunday in Cincinnati by dominating baseline exchanges through the Ad court. The engine room of Coric’s game has always been a rock-solid backhand, and he led with his strong suit to win his maiden ATP Masters 1000 title.

Coric was always looking to go backhand-to-backhand with Tsitsipas, where the Croatian proved to be more consistent and more powerful.

Coric Backhand Groundstrokes

• 86 backhands
• 4 errors
• 10 winners

Tsitsipas Backhand Groundstrokes

• 94 backhands
• 15 errors
• 0 winners

Tsitsipas raced to a 4-1 lead after 16 minutes of play on the back of making his first 16 backhands of the match. The Greek then went through a period missing four out of five backhands, and the early break and the momentum quickly dried up. Coric’s backhand went into lockdown mode for the rest of the set, making his last 25 backhands of the first set, which included four winners.

Overall for the match, Coric’s backhand groundstroke racked up 10 winners while yielding just four errors. Tsitsipas was unable to hit a single backhand groundstroke winner, committing 15 errors. Coric’s average backhand speed was 70 mph, which was significantly faster than Tsitsipas’ 60 mph. In fact, Coric’s average backhand speed was just one mile per hour slower than Tsitsipas’ average forehand speed (71 mph), and almost as fast as his own forehand (72 mph average).

The Croatian felt at home standing in the Ad court crushing backhands and using his run-around forehand to hit high and heavy back cross court. Coric had the perfect game plan of nullifying and frustrating Tsitsipas’ powerful game by keeping the ball flowing back and forth through the Ad court until the right ball presented itself to attack somewhere else.

Coric hit 43 run-around forehands for the match, which was almost identical to Tsitsipas’ 44. That stat alone is a win for Coric as Tsitsipas possesses a more penetrating forehand that can do more damage as a run-around shot. Both players hit five winners and committed five errors from run-around forehands.

The champion’s minor weak spot in the match was hitting regular forehands standing in the Deuce court. He hit 69 forehands for the match standing there, hitting three winners while contributing 14 errors. Deuce-court exchanges favoured Tsitsipas overall, but with Coric hitting 65 per cent (129/198) of all groundstrokes standing in the Ad court, Tsitsipas could not run his preferred strategy often enough.

Coric was simply more dominant from the back of the court. He won 56 per cent (46/82) of his baseline points, while Tsitsipas was way off that mark, winning just 41 per cent (29/71) from the baseline.

The 25-year-old also enjoyed serving success by going after Tsitsipas’ backhand return.

Tsitsipas Returns

• Forehand returns = 24, including five errors
• Backhand returns = 37, including 11 errors

Tsitsipas hit 61 per cent (37/61) of returns as a backhand return, yielding 11 return errors from that side.

Impressively, Coric managed to execute his favorite pattern of play to take his biggest title. Controlling the Ad court with his solid backhand and heavy run-around forehand was always going to be the preferred way to wrestle control of points against Tsitsipas.

It must feel good to win on the biggest ATP stage with your “go-to” pattern of play.