This one’s interesting!

Our two buddies are each fielding a player who’s not in great form right now. A chance to reveal their true level here!

First thought that comes to mind: Marozsan isn’t in his prime, so Nakashima might end up countering him a bit too much. And the American serves well. If he had a slightly sharper +1, he’d put a lot of pressure on the Hungarian. Marozsan needs a bit of time to set up his steamroller game. And with the low bounce, he has a formidable weapon: the drop shot. When the pace is high, we saw against Majchrzak that it can really bother Nakashima too. We’ll see if Marozsan can play that well. For me, it’s about finding the right slider between “it’s going too fast and it pisses off Nakash” and “Nakash counters Fabian well enough to force too many errors.” With a good Fabian, I wouldn’t have hesitated, but he didn’t reassure me at all against Nardi. As soon as the rally was established, he was struggling! But I think Nardi plays a bit faster than Nakashima from the baseline, and that Fabian can impose a certain tempo here. I’d lean slightly toward that scenario, personally!