KK struggling?

Two players who need to bounce back after a tougher spell, and a match with quite a few unknowns...

Four losses in a row for Khachanov, who has really hit the brakes after an exceptional start to the summer. We know he’s a big fighter, but he needs his energy at max to perform because he doesn’t have a huge baseline shot to make the difference quickly. Still, I thought he was pretty good in Almaty, where he was defending his title and ran into a very inspired Struff in a very tricky first round for him.

He’s defending a final here, and I think he’ll find conditions a bit better for him with this slightly slower surface and a bounce that isn’t as low. It’s time to get the machine going again!

As for Griekspoor, he’s been one of the toughest players to follow for weeks, in my opinion.

The reason is simple: everything starts in his head, and things don’t seem to be going super well in there.

Catastrophic all summer after an exceptional first half of the year, there was improvement in Shanghai with the win over Sinner, then a super frustrating loss to Vacherot.

You could have expected a rebound, and then another surprising defeat to Fearnley in a match he almost turned around like he often does, but where he was dominated for a large part of the encounter.

I get the feeling Griekspoor could have the playing style to trouble the Russian by attacking often and coming forward to the net a lot, as Struff did, but between the slower conditions and Tallon’s chronic instability, I find it very (too) hard to trust him at this stage.