Rune the Ruin

Holger showed us his physical weaknesses again in his first match against VDZ. We definitely can't count on him!

What's more, when Rune isn't doing well, taking on a guy like Struff who only hits bags, goes to the net and doesn't give you any rhythm, is really not easy. I have loads of examples! Jarry at Wim, Popyrin at Toronto, Halys at Roland, Opelka at Miami... In short, I think you get the idea ;). On the other hand, if he's doing well, he has this ability to cover his court very well, read the game well and defend well in wall mode. That's his DNA for me. The trap with him is trying to categorize him too much. The perfect example is against Berrettini at the OA. The Italian played his part as an aggressor serve / forehand wonderfully and Rune fell too much into this defensive passivity. And at one point, Berrett wasn't killer enough and Rune was tired of being powerless, so he turned into a powerful aggressor and turned the match around, until Berrettini was too physically out of shape. Was he in good shape? R1 defeat against Lehecka in Brisbane, a big 5 sets with an average level against Zhang in the first round. So, well... Here, he arrives not only not at his best, but also perhaps injured. Unless he didn't feel strong enough for a long battle and would have played cunning. On Struffy's side, the German played his card to the fullest as expected against McDo. That makes 4 wins in a row for the German with the qualifiers. We've already seen historically that it's dangerous to let a German get too confident... (that one's borderline, should I leave it?) 🤣