JM way superior?

3-0 in head-to-heads for the Argentinian, surprising!

Only wins on clay in this 3/0, JM Cerundolo is still far below VDZ in terms of level of play and that was pretty clear over the last few years, so this H2H surprises me a bit. Nothing to get too excited about either because on clay JM Cerundolo is a real threat! VDZ also plays in phases, and this tournament is the perfect example: last year he knocks out Djoko when no one expects it after losing in qualies, so typical of him. His current period is quite hard to read: he has a great tournament in Rotterdam then gets thrashed in Dubai and no one really knows why, he’s hard to follow. On the other hand, JM Cerundolo is improving well and arriving in good form; the transition to hard isn’t great and his game doesn’t really suit it either, so I put it into perspective – he’s not built for hard courts, but there’s progress. He’s worked on his serve, he’s being a bit more aggressive and he’s strengthened physically too, he’s getting better. Despite all that, he still has progress to make on hard, we can’t give him a ton of credit for now.

For me it all depends on VDZ: if he’s patient and accepts the fight while hitting hard at the right moments, he’s 10x better on this surface. There’s also the possibility that he just doesn’t feel like battling against a super annoying type of opponent and tanks, which seems unlikely at a Masters 1000 but with him you never know. If I had to sum it up, I’d say that with JM Cerundolo’s progress we need to take him a bit more seriously on fast surfaces while keeping our feet on the ground: he’s a clay grinder, he’s not going to become a beast on hard overnight. It would take a horrible match from VDZ to help him.