Final day

And not just any... The one between the two players fighting for 3rd place in the world, and soon for 2nd 😉

We will proceed meticulously.

Confrontations : 6-1 for Daniil, but last victory for Sinner in Beijing 3 weeks ago. Reason ? Sinner has made a lot of progress in building the point where he was too quick to make mistakes in their previous confrontations.

Matches in Vienna : Sinner has been tested much less and arrives fresher, but with a little less benchmarks in his game. Daniil really had to fight and release his premium version at least against Dimitrov and Tsitsipas...

Strong points : extreme resilience and realism on the part of the Russian. Very smart, good reading of the game, outlandish court coverage and great service. Jannik: exceptional baseliner thanks to perfect technical fluidity and timing. Hit anything that moves, put yourself under pressure all the time. Calm and calm temperament. A cold-blooded killer.

Weak points : net play, lack of power from the baseline, plays far from his line, not the best touch (you will have recognized Daniil I hope ;)). On the Italian side, obviously the physique and a slightly too homogeneous game.

What can happen : Daniil will definitely play very realistic tennis and hold a lot of his service games. In the exchange, he is not going to give too much angle to Sinner so as not to expose himself too much and have to cover too much ground. The match is played out over the long haul. The main objective is to make Sinner break by putting him under pressure and missing almost no shots which should make him force and commit the foul first. The Italian's goal, on the other hand, will be to build his point without rushing too much but while putting pressure (very difficult happy medium to find). Its level of service will be key. And it may seem a little paradoxical, but I think that in today's conditions we will have to make Daniil play a little more and offer him a real big physical fight to lower his level of resilience a little.

Likely scenario for me : I think Daniil will want to hit hard right away and will perhaps be a little more comfortable from the start thanks to his experience in the finals and the tournament (title holder). It can thus be adjusted a little earlier and gain a little advantage. If he wins a close first set, I would have a hard time believing in a match that will be played in 2 sets. In 3 sets anything can happen, but the Russian has the advantage in the long run.

Bonuses: if this is exhausting, we will look carefully at the painting of Daniil at Bercy. The Beijing -> Shanghai sequence already failed him 3 weeks ago, and he had already been completely elsewhere last year at Bercy losing against De Minaur (double fault on match point and broken racket 😅)