Andy Roddick has played some great tennis yesterday in the semi-finals of Miami Masters 1000 to beat Rafael Nadal 4:6, 6:3, 6:3.

Nadal has been playing great the whole week (except the first set against Nalbandian) and while Roddick didn’t have big problems with his opponents either, I personally had big doubts that Andy could beat Nadal in his current form.

The reason for my doubts is this: Andy has been playing too controlled and too conservative tennis – in my opinion.

I mean too controlled tennis to win major tournaments and to get into the top 3 in ATP rankings.

His game has matured so much in the last 5 years as a result of his work with Jimmy Connors and other experiences coaches but there was also a hidden drawback to this – all the coaches were focused on eliminating Andy’s errors and weaknesses and Andy has been listening to them too well.

He cut down on his unforced errors and I believe that he became just too focused on not making any mistakes at all.

If you’ve been watching tennis closely in the last few years, try to remember some spectacular or inspirational shots from Roddick. I personally cannot remember many.

But if I ask you to remember inspirational shots from Federer or Nadal in the last few years, we can talk for hours.

That is the difference between a Grand Slam winner and just a very good player.

Andy’s game is now tactically almost perfect. As I watch his every shot in the match, I can rarely spot a tactical mistake.

That’s why Andy can easily outplay a player like Almagro who plays excellent tennis but still makes too many tactical mistakes – like playing a down-the-line shot when he should have played a cross-court or like playing a fast ball when he should have hit a higher top spin shot so that he would have time to recover.

These are just some nuances in the high level tennis tactics but are exploited immediately by smart players like Roddick.

And Andy doesn’t make these “wrong” shots any more.

With his fantastic serve, great forehand, solid backhand, good play at the net, great mental attitude and almost perfect tactical play, Andy should be winning many more tournaments than he does.

But Andy won just one tournament in Memphis last year. Why?

For the same reason he lost the finals in Indian Wells final two weeks ago against Ljubicic – because his game is too controlled and there are no more inspirational shots.

Everything is risk calculated and every shot is smart. So why is that a problem?

Because when top 20 players in the world come to one tournament, at least one of those will be in the zone. He will play inspirational tennis with great shots coming from tough situations.

And the only way to beat such a player is to hit him with his own medicine – going for the shots instinctively and with courage.

Ivan Ljubicic played much braver shots in both tie-breaks he played against Andy in the finals. If you analyzed those shots from the point of risk and statistics, you wouldn’t normally recommend them to your player.

A typical shot like that is Ivan’s backhand down the line shot at 2:43 in the video…

But this is where instinct and inspiration come to play and a player MUST let these two override the mathematical probability of making a shot.

This is one of the main reasons why Federer dominates the game so much in the last 5 years. He plays tactically smart tennis but he also goes for his shots and in EVERY MATCH he plays you’ll see some spectacular shots you haven’t seen for while.

With Andy, you’ll have to watch him for weeks to see a winner played from behind the baseline.

So when Andy played his match against Nadal yesterday, he again played his tactically smart tennis for a set and half and that was just too easy for Nadal who won the first set and had no problems winning baseline exchanges in the second.

And then suddenly Andy realized that this is not good enough and that he HAS to do something else.

My best guess is that Andy simply fired those 4 massive forehands in the 8th game of the second set from desperation but that was in fact the smartest tactical decision he made in the last few years.

Andy broke Nadal, won the set and went more for his shots in the third set, breaking Nadal two times and winning one of the best matches of his career.

The real question now is whether Andy really “got it” – whether he really understood what happened.

I worry that he didn’t because in his interview after the match Andy said this:

You know, I took a lot of risk there in the last two sets. I said it on the court and I’ve it said a couple times:  The best thing I can think of is I rolled the dice a lot and came up Yahtzee a couple times. That’s what I have to do. My comfort zone of moving the ball around and maybe chip ping it around a little bit doesn’t work against Rafa.  I had to try to come up with something that at least took him out of his comfort zone a little bit, and it paid off.

The problem with this statement and this type of thinking is that Andy still sees his shots as risky. But what he doesn’t see is that if he plays low risk shots, there is a high risk of losing!

What it boils down to is that if your shots are played with low risk, there is a high risk of losing – you just play too passive.

In order to decrease the risk of losing, you must increase the risk of missing the shot. Of course, you need to find the right level of risk because if you risk too much, the risk of losing the match goes up again.

But this is what Andy has not been able to do in most of his matches. His shot selection is very intelligent and it eventually becomes too controlled and there is almost no risk of missing the shot.

Which means that he doesn’t put enough pressure on the opponent and if the opponent is able to come up with some inspirational shots – like Federer always does or Ljubicic did in the last final, then Andy is simply outplayed.

Even Nadal who plays one of the most controlled and safe tennis games is always coming up with fantastic passing shots and counterpunching winners when he needs to.

He simply lets his instincts override the “smart tactical” decisions and he trusts his feeling and just goes for his shots without doubt – and in most cases makes them.

If Andy Roddick wants to become a winner of more Grand Slams and get into the top 3 in the world, he needs to let go of statistics and probabilities here and there in the match and simply go for his shots when his instinct tells him so.

He is certainly capable if hitting winners from anywhere on the court with his forehand and simply has to trust the shot and his instinctive decision because that is what separates the good players from the great.