The trap..

Griekspoor is playing well again and he looks motivated, but he just hurt his back—it sucks because the opportunity looked great.

Griekspoor indoors is always very solid, I’d say anyway; the Dutchman loves these conditions and it’s anything but a surprise to see him motivated and fired up again. I liked his attitude and level of play in Vienna and I was really looking forward to the match against Zverev, but he had a back issue. Hard to know more—either it’s precautionary and he really wanted to save himself to try to play Paris, or it’s a serious problem and his participation here is almost only due to the M1000 obligation. We don’t really know and we’re a bit on the defensive as a result; before factoring that in we saw value on Griekspoor. Diallo is struggling to finish the year; he played a good match against FAA but there was still a 6-2 against him in quick conditions; here it’s slower and the bounce is lower too, which isn’t reassuring for him at all. The trend is to lay him at the moment. Griekspoor leads 2-0 in the head-to-head and both times were this season, once on clay and once on grass, which I still think is telling. Diallo can play well indoors, but for me Griekspoor is a notch above in these conditions (when the brain is switched on). That’s why his withdrawal from Vienna pisses me off: I was ready to back him properly, but now that there’s doubt it’s normal to pull back—are we going to have to watch it live or take a pre-match bet with some protection?