A new boost?

New coach for Mpetshi, and not just anyone! Mr. Roig, former coach of a certain Nadal...

Mpetshi needs a change; he’s been quite down for several weeks now after an encouraging start to the season in terms of points. In terms of his actual play, I can’t say he made a great impression on me, quite the opposite really: I found him really not good, but “lucky” to get through. Sure enough, that caught up with him afterwards with a bunch of really bad losses. Even if he won 3 matches in Dubai, apparently it was still poor and very tight. I only see a coaching change as a way to help him get back into good form. He’ll be facing Majchrzak, who isn’t doing suuuper well at the moment either, but I put that a bit into perspective given the level of his opponents.

I was pretty keen to say that the slowness of Indian Wells was interesting for him, especially against Mpetshi, but looking at the qualifying stats this year it seems to be quite fast. I find the Pole quite smart on court and he has a special style that can really annoy a lot of players, but he does like having play coming at him; if Mpetshi’s serve is on, he’s not going to like it. I’d even go further and say that his confidence isn’t great either.