ADM without shining?

The Australian is so hard to beat that he’s winning without being brilliant at the moment—nothing exceptional, but enough to beat a lot of players on the tour.

I like ADM, but I can’t say he’s making a strong impression on me despite steady, solid results for several months now. He hasn’t lost in the first round of a tournament since Cincinnati, and that was mostly a scheduling issue after a title and no rest. When I watch his matches I’m not as impressed as before—I thought he used to be better than he is right now—but honestly, who cares as long as he’s winning, right? He’s serious, diligent, and rarely slips up; it takes something serious to really move him. That said, he often has tough matches against big servers. It’s paradoxical because you’d think he has the movement and baseline solidity to return and make them play, but don’t forget he likes to be in control of the point—spending all day defending isn’t the game plan either. And here we’ve got a great candidate to bother him! Diallo combines quality serving with baseline aggression—the two factors that trouble ADM. The Canadian isn’t in his best form, it’s been a long season and he’s a bit gassed, but I liked his first round and, like I said, the matchup isn’t too bad. If he serves the same way tomorrow and keeps coming forward to attack and take the net, then I think he can seriously give ADM a hard time, who can look sluggish against this type of profile. So yeah, it’s not fast, and a dialed-in ADM is supposed to be hard to hit through, so I’ll need good odds/lines to take a bet—but you get the idea!