Pinnington is stepping up.

The Brit has come through qualifying and seems to be reaching a new level this season, even though he still has major progress to make in terms of attitude and consistency.

Do we need to get carried away because of that? Not really I'd say, apart from his good Dallas run, Pinnington hasn't exactly backed it up and has just ended a streak of 4 losses in a row. Beating the returning JJ Wolf and the young Blanch isn't some incredible achievement, I'll need more than that to trust him. He still has his double faults/blackout issues in matches, and that fiery attitude can backfire on him when nothing's working. He didn’t steamroll his opponents in qualies either..

He’ll be up against Zhang, who hasn’t been doing super well this year but might benefit from this return to clay to finally string some wins together. His record on this surface is good, he’s been surprising in several tournaments and we know he can play well on it for several reasons. He likes having time to dictate with his forehand and almost develops a better game on clay than on hard courts.. This clay is particular though, but in theory it’s not bad for him, he doesn’t want slow, heavy, muddy clay either, and he can still make his serve and aggressive game work.

For a first matchup I give Zhang a better chance to win, but with him you always have to be cautious..