His worst enemy..

I'm not talking about Zverev but about the heat!

Over 35 degrees expected tomorrow in Indian Wells, it’s going to be very, very hot and that’s been a worrying topic for Sinner since the Australian Open. He’s changed a few habits to cope better with this factor, no dark colors for a while now and special attention to it, he doesn’t want to make the same mistake again. So I’m going to assume it’s not as decisive as usual, but we’ll still keep an eye on it live to see if he doesn’t suffer from the heat. Aside from the conditions he’s really good in this tournament, you could say he’s found his usual domination again, there were only two tiebreaks against Fonseca but otherwise it’s been heavy beatdowns. The Italian is back and he’s scary.

He’s not the only one looking scary this week, Zverev has been showing very good things in his recent matches, and if you take out his poor match against Nakashima his tournament has been excellent in terms of play, on top of maintaining the serving quality we know from him. He completely shut Fils down, leaving him only scraps, the Frenchman tried to change tactics but it didn’t work and here’s Zverev in the semis, ready to take on the Sinner challenge. A challenge he knows well: last year they played 4 times and he lost 4 times, but there were some really big tight matches, especially in Vienna and even in Turin despite the fairly straightforward scoreline. The only thrashing in 2025 was in Paris but he was completely spent; otherwise he usually shows up against Sinner, and given his level this week I think we can at least count on him to be present, so to speak. A Sinner beatdown would be a bit of a surprise to me.

I picture a match where Zverev fights hard and manages to hold a few tough service games…