Time for Budkov's revenge!

Budkov will give it his all to make the Etcheverry wall tremble—will that be enough to claim a first victory at this level?

These two faced off in the Davis Cup in Norway indoors at the start of the year, and Etcheverry pulled it out in a nail-biter, 7/6 in the 3rd set. What’s happened since?

I’d call Etcheverry’s season disappointing; we’ve seen him play quite a few mediocre matches, and I find his ball doesn’t bite as much as before. He’s still a big scrapper, but he’s got less confidence than in 2023—you can really feel it in his game and, consequently, in his results.

That said, I thought he looked pretty good in Stockholm last week, in conditions that aren’t really his, normally—it was slow, and he took advantage of it to make use of his grit and solidity in addition to his big serve.

On Budkov’s side, it’s kind of the opposite, since this has been his breakout season, with lots of wins on the Challenger tour, including 4 titles, 2 of them indoors. He’s still lacking experience on the ATP Tour, since he hasn’t played much there, and he’s also short on wins against top-100 players—that’s the current limitation—but he seems closer than ever to crossing that threshold. The Norwegian lost to Cilic last week, which deprived him of a lot of time to get his game set up—something Etcheverry won’t allow. In the match-up, we should see Budkov taking the initiative in rallies against an Etcheverry who’ll try to impose his solidity; in that kind of battle and in these conditions, I’m inclined to give a slight edge to the aggressor.