Nothing to Lose

Kym has destroyed everything in his path so far...

Kym cruised through the qualies, including beating Zheng and Wu in easy straight sets as an underdog. After that, he played his first main draw GS match against Quinn, who had a lot of support from the home crowd. Kym started off absolutely bullying Quinn, rushing him constantly, and not allowing Quinn to impose his attacking game whatsoever. After winning the first two sets easily, his level dropped a bit, which allowed Quinn to take over and dictate more. It went to a fourth set that was very even, and eventually Kym won it in the tiebreak, nonchalantly sealing the match with an ace. Nakashima looked to be on his way to an easy victory after a 6-2 opening set, but instead lost the next two sets before making a comeback and winning in the deciding set tiebreak against De Jong (using his experience and clutchness in the end). Nakashima had a fairly solid level as usual, but he did experience a few dips against a De Jong who has improved greatly and was inspired, having come through the qualifiers.

I'm not sure Nakashima will like facing someone like Kym, who serves big, goes to the net quite often, and rushes his opponent. Unless you are a top player, you need to play this way against Nakashima, he is too solid if you don't play aggressively! Marcos did a preview for Nakashima against Blockx in Cincinnati, where Blockx had a few matches under his belt, where he was hitting the ball huge. He ended up breaking Nakashima three times in the first set, on fast hardcourt! Nakashima did win in the end, but it was in a deciding set tiebreak. I'm getting kind of a similar feeling here... big hitter coming in with a lot of confidence. I quite liked what I saw from Kym mentally in his first round; he handled it very well. There is always a chance that he is unable to maintain this good level, and Nakashima surely will play a better match after coming out of a long match now. Nonetheless, with my expectations for how this will be priced, I can only lean toward one player...