Is Diallo heating up?

In tears in his coach’s arms after his win over Rublev at IW, the Canadian might well be getting back to playing confident tennis!

And yeah, because since the start of the season, we've been giving Diallo a pretty hard time. At the same time, there hasn’t been much to grab onto to compliment him. In IW, he was kind of on track to keep struggling if Bellucci hadn’t given him a helping hand to get through that first round. Then he loosened up in the second round against Rublo, played better, had a bit of luck (a let winner on break point in set 3). Then 3 sets against Félix. Exactly the kind of tournament that can give him his confidence back, right? Maybe, yeah. The conditions are even better for him here. After that, there are no rules in tennis. He could go right back to being the mediocre player he’s been all season. But that scene with him in his coach’s arms still shows me that he’s putting his heart into it and working hard. And knowing him a bit, when the confidence comes back, his game style immediately looks a lot better.

Yibing Wu is quite a character. He’s a guy who, when he’s not injured, plays at a top-50 level easily. I think that’s why he didn’t enter Indian Wells qualifying after his very good tournament in Acapulco. I don’t really know what to make of his loss to Andrade in Cap Cana, but the Ecuadorian has been a pain for quite a few players, and the conditions there were almost like clay. So no big warning sign for me.

Against Wu, you often want an excellent counterpuncher who can turn defense into attack, like a Cobolli, a Z. Svajda, or a Nardi in form. Diallo can sometimes be tricky to hit through, he knows how to weather the storm and he’s not afraid of powerful tennis. His desire to drag his opponents into short patterns could be a great weapon here to cut off Wu’s attacking plays...