The two surprises of Rio

Two great breakthroughs in Rio for these two players who can take a step up this season, it gives us a great matchup here!

I’ll start with Tirante, who still benefited from a pretty nice draw with Cerundolo’s retirement. He fought well against Tabilo afterwards but completely ran out of gas physically in the third set; he’s still too dependent on his serve and forehand quality. He makes quite a few errors but at least he plays his own game and will improve quickly by pushing the limits. On paper, it’s a tournament with good conditions, his serve is going to hurt and he can really unleash his attacking game. But he has to be careful to control what he’s doing; it’s not easy to keep errors down at altitude with a ball that really flies. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him spraying the court a bit before he finds his range.

I trust Buse a bit more to adapt; he seems tactically smart and able to make adjustments. The physical doubts are on his side though: he’s coming in from Rio a day later and with less time to recover. He also took a real hit from the heat in Rio, I don’t know how much that bothered him afterwards, but it’s something to note!

In terms of match-up, it’s supposed to be pretty tight given Tirante’s profile; I see him solid on serve and more in trouble on return. I really find Buse more complete, but as I said, he doesn’t offer big guarantees; you need to be sure he’ll handle the back-to-back schedule well, and I’m not convinced he will!