Heavy-hitters showdown

It won't be pretty here, guys! Diallo is playing better again, but Bergs is on fire. Who to pick?

Yes, that’s the first thing I want to highlight here: Zizou is on fire. He’s playing hyper-aggressive, powerful tennis, and therefore risky too. The whole question here is whether he can keep up this pace, or whether Diallo’s game will cool his ardor. Indeed, the Canadian doesn’t give you much rhythm. He knows how to slow things down in rallies, of course, but his goal is still to hit through you as soon as he can. So less rhythm for Zizou, which maybe means more discomfort. I’m asking David for the stat on Zizou’s matches against big-serving attackers, but right off the bat I know it won’t necessarily matter much given how much Zizou’s level has fluctuated over the season. I think it could really bother him because of the lack of rhythm, since Zizou loves battles. He draws his strength from a confrontation in the literal sense. The match is being played early in the day too, at the peak of the heat. What could give me hope for Zizou is the quality of his return against Cerundolo. He often went for the throat right off the return, and that changed quite a few things. But nothing tells me he’ll be able to read the Canadian’s serve (which also benefits from the rather high bounce of the Shanghai courts). Certainly not their head to head, anyway... Apart from their match at the Vancouver Challenger in 2022, Diallo just didn’t get broken in 4 sets, hitting good percentages of points won behind both his first and second serves. So I’m imagining a tight match on the numbers, but with Zizou losing more big points because he’ll have to go for a bit more and in a less comfortable situation than against an aggressive baseliner like Cerundolo. I’d price Diallo around 1.6 personally...