Big Foe is back in town.

Tiafoe at the US Open is a different man

The American hasn't made it worse than the quarter-finals in his three appearances here, standards that are pretty high and a little above his usual standards. Not surprising given that Tiafoe is stronger in Grand Slams than elsewhere and on top of that Tiafoe in the USA is also stronger than elsewhere, this mix simply explains why he is a top top player here. And when we see his preparation for this tournament we have reason to be positive for him, he has played three good tournaments with a convincing level of play. The only small problem is his back injury when he retired against Rune, hard to know how serious it was or not but he played mixed doubles with Keys so if it really was serious he wouldn't have taken the risk. I rewatched this doubles and I didn't see any sign of pain from Tiafoe, he was moving and serving correctly in my opinion, so nothing bad on my side. Then we have to talk about Nishioka, the Japanese is capable of being a real pain in the neck but only when he wants to play. Last week in Winston-Salem he completely sold out the match and that's a bit of his current dynamic I want to say. So yeah right now we don't expect him to do anything but he's a GC so with the motivation maybe he can create a surprise, it wouldn't be surprising on his side. As for the matchup it depends a lot on the form of the two I think, I remember their last match in Dallas this year and Tiafoe was completely burned after a set and not in a great period. Nishioka was finding his tennis a little and he wanted to play. Here it's really the exact opposite and in these conditions I still have a lot of trouble seeing Tiafoe lose