Elementary, my dear...

Walton! Easy. Way easier than beating Daniil right now, my man!

And yes, if you’ve been following the Asian swing a bit, Daniil has found his mojo again and has been willing to evolve his game with a lot more aggression. The low bounce in Almaty also makes it tougher to attack his flat trajectories. The Australian put in a decent match against his compatriot in his R1, but Schoolkate clearly wasn’t solid enough. He had to take on risk to try to get through Walton’s solidity from the baseline, but it mostly just led to more unforced errors. Daniil is really letting his shots fly a lot more now, as I was saying. Walton will have to counter a lot again, which hardly bothers him. For me he’s the near-perfect definition of an all-around player, which comes with its drawbacks: no real standout shot. The serve? Yeah, it’s not bad, but boy did Daniil return well in Shanghai. The only legitimate question for me here would be Daniil’s deeper motivation in a 250. He could “test” some tweaks to his game. But hey, you give me Walton at 8, I don’t think I’m taking it...