At home, Uncle Ben?

Huge banger for this R1, let’s watch!

First good news for the Frenchman: he only plays on Tuesday. He had to string quite a few matches together in Adelaide and you could feel he was a bit worn out at the end of the final against Machac, and as with the other finalists from this week, an extra day off is something important in this context. On the other hand, the level of play is really there, he was excellent all week and you can tell he’s back to a physical level that lets him get his game going again and become very dangerous. As for Shelton, it’s the complete opposite: he’ll be fresher, but he had a really poor run in Auckland with two pretty average matches.

In terms of the matchup, we’ve got two very offensive left-handers facing each other for the first time. We should see fairly short rallies and a lot of risk-taking, which isn’t bad for the Frenchman since that’s what he likes, and Shelton won’t force a physical battle with long rallies like other player profiles might. On the downside, as Elie said in his comment, Shelton is really a player who outdoes himself in Grand Slams, and we can’t say the same about the Frenchman for now.