The Oxford Companion to Military History (2001), which he edited, shows that he was no narrow specialist; he understood ancient commanders as well as modern ones, and appreciated the ways in which changes in weaponry have constantly transformed tactics.
The 63-year-old is utilising the international fortnight to plot how best to set up and transform tactics to claw back the seven points already dropped from the opening nine.
But the new rules have also transformed the tactics and focus of the campaign, and could eventually shape the outcome.
Except just as he transformed his tactics during the course of the match, Federer evolved to his exalted state of calm over a period of years.
He saw no action until D-day in June 1944, his early work in the army instead being dedicated to the development of the Bailey bridge, a British invention that transformed battlefield tactics.
What he had not been told was that a strategy – devised by MI5 and adopted by the RUC in complete secrecy – had prioritised the acquisition of intelligence over the solving of crime and the prosecution of offenders, in a way that utterly transformed policing tactics in Northern Ireland.
Rebels, for instance, can booby-trap whole planets, a feature that will surely transform multiplayer tactics.
The litigation arising from the disputes between activist hedge-fund shareholders and their target companies is transforming strategies, tactics and the law.
Because at the moment that Idema was entering his Afghan prison, a group of very senior US military men, led by a General called David Petraeus, were sitting down in a military staff college in Kansas and beginning to write a study that would completely transform the tactics of the US army in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
As early as 1987, however, those D.E.A. updates had been transformed into questionable tactics in New Jersey.
Mr. Rangel said that the last-minute tactics transformed what many people had viewed as a boring race into a reprehensible one, though he too stopped short of placing blame.
