How good is Mensik?

A straight-sets win against the dangerous Jarry, surely Blanchet won't pose any problems?

Or will he? We correctly predicted that Mensik would have the upper hand against Jarry due to an advantageous matchup. Despite a straight-sets win, it was not exactly a high-quality match. Mensik did his part decently: first serves and putting enough balls back in play for Jarry to have his usual ridiculous unforced errors. For some reason, Jarry's first serve was 10 km/h~ slower than usual, which allowed Mensik to get into a lot of rallies on return. I actually found Mensik a bit sloppy despite the easy win, allowing 10 breakpoints in like 5 different games to this version of Jarry. Blanchet also faced a very erratic opponent, Marozsan. After going into the third set with one set apiece, Marozsan was serving for the third set (had a SP on his own serve) and got broken. Then he missed a volley on another set point in the tiebreak, lost the set, and just kind of gave up in the fourth set.

For Mensik, I tend to keep it kind of simple. If he is facing a player that will give him pace and have lower rally tolerance (Attacking Baseliners), you back him - he is great against them. Against almost all other kinds of players, he tends to be a lay; I find him quite overrated. He has a huge first serve and a decently solid baseline game, which makes him quite hard to beat for most players. I wouldn't say it's the most amazing matchup for Blanchet either... he'll face someone with a much better serve than his and someone who can also hang pretty well in rallies. Mensik's second serve is always vulnerable, though, and the fact that Mensik is not really playing at his best since the hardcourt season resumed increases his chances a bit... Blanchet can play without any real expectations, while Mensik is expected to dominate here. If Mensik serves big and stays solid in rallies, it will be tough, but coming into the match as a big favorite, it's not unlikely that we see him lose his focus a bit and overpress! Lastly, we do have an example of Blanchet facing someone with the same playstyle (Cazaux - Big Server / Solid Baseliner), and the H2H is not pretty. Cazaux leads 4-0 and 8-1 in sets... although at least Blanchet has kept the scorelines somewhat respectable. Hm, where do we go from here...?