Playable for Coco!

Moutet was expecting to face Hurkacz, but it’s ultimately Kovacevic who awaits him.

Nice performance from Kovacevic yesterday in a match that was pretty average quality-wise, but mainly because of the windy conditions. I mostly felt like it was Hurkacz who was the worse of the two; Kova did his job and I have to say he’s been quite surprising this season, he hasn’t messed up many matches. He changed coach to develop his game and start scraping through rounds in this kind of tournament, and his ambitions are currently starting to materialize; he’s improving a lot and in the right way. Last week he was close to beating Tiafoe and now he takes out Hurkacz, watch out for him. He’s aware of how dangerous Moutet is too; he says that in the small-ball game he won’t beat him and that he has to impose his own style, which makes sense.

Speaking of the Frenchman, he seems to be picking his tournaments this season, playing a bit fewer matches, which raises a few questions. On top of that, with awful draws he shows up without much confidence or rhythm; it’s a strange situation. The Indian Wells courts suit his game pretty well in my opinion; they’re quite slow with a high bounce, so he can knit rallies together and cook up his own sauce. It shouldn’t be too slow either though, he needs to be able to win a few easy points because he lacks pure power.

For a first meeting between the two, I imagine Kovacevic knows what he has to do, meaning hit big on serve and follow it to the net, keeping the rallies pretty short. I’m betting on a strong start from him before possibly getting reeled in by Moutet, who will slowly set up his game and his rhythm. I still have a bit of trouble trusting the Frenchman when he’s the favorite, and even less so now that he doesn’t play much.