Mpétard

Mpesthi is ready to fire off big shotgun blasts indoors; the noise is deafening.

Playing Mpetshi indoors is hell—it's already tough to break him to begin with, but indoors without much room at the back it’s brutal. That said, the Frenchman doesn’t have a great indoor record for now because he also likes having a bit of time to fire missiles; in Shanghai he looked good since he could really let it rip. Here it’s quicker and he can’t be as comfortable, which is why I think he’s not at his prime indoors yet. He’s coming in with good form though, enough to string wins together and get ready to defend his title next week! Nice first-round matchup on paper, but watch out for Ruusuvuori who is deadly indoors—I’ve already seen him play some monstrous matches and he apparently played pretty well at the Challenger last week. The Finn doesn’t like big servers and that’s a big problem, but Mpetshi doesn’t like facing guys that solid from the baseline either; he can get countered and Ruusuvuori keeps the ball low too. A first round where Mpetshi should logically have to go through at least one tie-break; with his current confidence he can take the TBs, but I don’t feel like betting on him at short odds and ending up in tie-breaks—I prefer him as an underdog.