Another dangerous wild card?
The Brazilians are starting to get a few good players on the tour besides Fonseca, it’s coming along nicely!
Reis Da Silva will be honoring the WC in the main draw for the first time; normally he plays the qualifiers at this tournament. I don’t know him very well but his game is pretty complete, I actually think he’s good and capable of playing at a high level. He doesn’t have a huge strength or weakness, he does a bit of everything well and I find his backhand really solid. He’s not an incredible player though, he works for his points and can hit big but he’s not very tall so he has to make his opponents crack. He’s had a few nice matches on the Challenger tour this season, notably with a win over Lajovic followed by a tight loss to Vallejo, the man in form right now on the South American Challengers. With big support from the crowd I hope he’ll be able to play his best tennis, and if that happens he could really hang in there...
His opponent will be Hanfmann. The German messed up his Golden Swing last year and that doesn’t really surprise me, he doesn’t like this kind of clay; what he wants is European clay at altitude. Here it’s heavy clay with humid conditions that slow the ball down, not at all what he enjoys. First match of the season on clay, against a local player and the crowd — that’s really not the kind of match where you usually feel like trusting Hanfmann; he’s better as an underdog when nobody expects anything from him. I’m not going to tell you that Reis Da Silva is better than him, far from it, but this could flip and turn into a bit of a trap if Hanfmann tightens up... Or maybe he’ll just steamroll him like in 2022 at the Challenger here?
