Denis Shapovalov, Positively Chipper
Shapo's performance at the 2025 Dallas Open AKA how do we describe Shapo's game without saying "Swashbuckling" challenge (impossible)
If I had the video editing chops of a J. Kyle Mann or a Jon Bois, I would start my hypothetical Denis Shapovalov Youtube video with a supercut of every time a commentator/analyst has described his game as “Swashbuckling” (the most recent example: John Isner on the “Nothing Major” podcast). For those unfamiliar with the Canadian’s game, and why his style is described as such, I invite you to watch this video and come up with a more fitting adjective:
I am a huge fan of Shapo, not only because he’s a fellow Canadian, but because he falls into a specific archetype of tennis player I find extremely romantic: the nonchalant but explosive all-court player. Everything he hits looks like it is being launched off his racquet, yet he looks like he’s just casually skipping through the court. There’s an extra sway to the way he hits the ball, like a jazz musician’s groove, or J Dilla’s drums. How does he have so much time? Why isn’t he rushed? I described Karen Khachanov’s game as being set to a metronome; Shapo’s feels like a mischievous kid who pressed his finger on the pendulum to stop the beat, then flicked it so it would go faster.
The last two years have been tough for Shapo fans: he missed a significant part of 2023 due to injury, and hasn’t looked anywhere close to the top-20 level he flashed in 2020 and 2021. The aggression and risk-taking that marked his style was still there, but instead of eye-popping winners and imaginative shotmaking, it was ill-advised, off-balance moonshots that rarely paid off.
Fast forward to the Dallas Open, in which Shapo scored wins against the top 3 seeds in the tournament (Taylor Fritz, Casper Ruud, Tommy Paul, who incidentally are all top 10 players), and it looks like he’s back! We as fans are rejoicing his return, but are also left wondering: has anything changed, and can he climb to even greater heights?
Return Position Tweaks
Two things stuck out to me during the first set of Shapo’s match against World No.4 (and #1 seed at Dallas) Taylor Fritz: quite possibly the two worst service games he had in the tournament, and his struggles to do any damage during Fritz’s service games.
Shapo proceeded to make some pretty big changes in the 2nd set with respect to his return of serve. On first serves, he was struggling with timing the return off of Fritz’s elite first serve. Notice that he’s standing slightly in front of the “Dallas” sign on the court, and then split stepping forward. He’s taking time away from himself by trying to more aggressively meet the serve, which resulted in an inability to get the first serve return in the court.
In the 2nd set, he’s standing a little behind the “Dallas” sign, and he’s also split stepping to the side rather than forward. He’s giving himself more time (by lengthening the distance the serve has to travel), and he’s also giving himself more opportunities to return the serve on his forehand (his favored side).
On second serves, he made the opposite adjustment: being more aggressive and cutting the second serve off by stepping forward. In the 1st set, Shapo would set up on the baseline, and then as Fritz tosses the ball, he would start retreating back.
The deep return position on the 2nd serve has been popularized by Nadal and Medvedev, among others, as a way to give up the opportunity to attack their opponents’ second serve in favor of getting the return in and playing an extended rally. Shapo isn’t really someone who wins by playing long rallies, and against Fritz he often came out second best.
In the second set, however, Shapo positions himself a little behind the baseline, but instead of retreating back, he’s stepping forward. The second serve is typically a slower, spinnier serve, which means a returner is more likely to (and more successful at) attack it, instead of a first serve where the returner’s just trying not to miss. Stepping forward and cutting the angle of the serve off also takes time away from Fritz as well, and allows the point to be played more on Shapo’s terms.
Feeling Chipper
In the latter stages of the tournament, Shapo started to incorporate the chip return to his game plan as well. A chip return gives the server no pace to hit against, and requires them to generate all of their own power. Against Tommy Paul in the semifinals, this was effective because Paul doesn’t generate a lot of pace by himself. As a result, a chip return puts the rally at neutral, because Paul is not able to take advantage of the slow incoming ball. That said, Tommy Paul is one of the better players when it comes to winning extended rallies, so Shapo does well in this point to eventually turn the tide and seal the first set with a long point.
In the finals against Casper Ruud, Shapo used this tactic much more liberally, and often chipped it into the ad court (left half of the court from the perspective of the player receiving the ball) irrespective of where he was receiving the return.
Chipping the return, specifically to the ad court, is effective against Ruud because it limits his options. If Ruud chooses to hit the ball with his backhand, then Shapo gets an advantage right away, because Ruud’s backhand is not capable of generating pace, and he’s very likely to hit it cross court (to Shapo’s forehand). Ruud knows this about himself, so he’s going to try as hard as he can to run around his backhand to hit his forehand, but here, his options are also limited. If he hits a forehand cross court to Shapo’s ad court, it’s a forehand for Shapo, and he could very likely go down the line and expose Ruud’s poor court positioning (running around your backhand to hit your forehand means you’re leaving a lot of space to your right for the opponent to hit into). This means that the best option for Ruud is to actually hit the forehand down the line to Shapo’s backhand. This is what Ruud does on this point…
…but remember what we saw earlier in this post about Shapo’s backhand? It’s a weapon, and he’s more than capable of attacking with it. That’s exactly what he does with Ruud’s forehand, as he rips it cross-court for a winner.
This pattern plays itself out a few more times, and Shapo comes out victorious on this exchange as well.
Because of Ruud’s limitations on his own game, Shapo’s left-handedness, and Shapo’s ability to generate offense on his ostensibly weaker wing (the backhand), the chip return forces Ruud to realize that his best option is still a pretty bad one.
One way Ruud tries to limit the effectiveness of Shapo’s chip return is by serving wide on the deuce side (right half of the Ruud’s court serving diagonally to Shapo’s right half). This makes the chip return to the ad court too risky for Shapo, because he would have to go down the line (higher part of the net, less distance to the baseline). Shapo instead returns the ball down the middle, which in theory gives Ruud a forehand in the middle of the court for him to do some damage. However, Shapo’s backhand is good enough to stand up to the pace of Ruud’s (very good) forehand, and in this case Ruud blinks first and hits a forehand into the middle of the court that allows Shapo to hit his forehand to Ruud’s (not as good) backhand. Once this shift happens, the point is pretty much over for Ruud, as he gets put into backhand jail.
Even when Shapo’s chip return is downright bad, he was able to come away with the point simply by being the talented shotmaker that he is. On this point, Shapo’s return lands very short, giving Ruud a chance to approach the net (not his favorite thing to do). However, the short slice return means that Ruud hits his approach shot below the net, so he has to lift the ball up and hit with a lot of spin to have it land back in the court. This gives Shapo more time to get to the ball, and rip a gorgeous down the line passing shot with his backhand (a shot we saw quite a bit of in the Ruud match and also the Tommy Paul match)
Is He Back???
Despite all the tweaks on return we talked about, it’s not clear to me that Shapovalov’s game is noticeably different. He still plays the same big serve, big groundstroke, first strike tennis that we know him for. He still makes more errors than one would like, off of shots that make you think “I don’t think he needed to hit that ball so close to the line”. It’s also worth noting that his title win in Dallas is his third ATP title, and that all of his title wins have been on fast indoor hard courts. Even his finals appearances (excluding title wins) were primarily on indoor hard courts (three out of five finals). These were the perfect conditions for him to re-enter the conversation as a potential top-20 player.
So maybe the answer is that he’s certainly playing some of his best tennis, but he is still playing it in the same way. That’s completely alright with me; because an ATP tour with Denis Shapovalov’s scorpion kicking backhand is much better than one without it.