A first for Bolt!

The 33-year-old Australian has qualified for the first time in his career for a clay-court tournament of this category, yes but...

Houston is surely the least "clay-like" of the clay tournaments actually, it's so atypical that this stat doesn’t mean much, and on the contrary it shows that the conditions here are special. Bolt beat Rybakov and Andrade, that’s not exactly impressive even if Andrade has beaten some good players recently. We don’t have an incredibly strong player in qualies you really need to watch out for, it’s more his profile that can make him a pain to play against. He’s a lefty, a good server with nice hands at the net, he likes to move forward, and on a good day he’s not easy to maneuver. He’s still much weaker than Wu in terms of peak level, but he already has two matches in his legs and the Chinese hasn’t been great for a few tournaments now...

Maybe I’m worrying for nothing but after Acapulco he quickly lost in Cap Cana (to Andrade, actually) and went out in the first round against Diallo in Miami, he didn’t play Indian Wells and so he’ll have played only two matches in March before arriving here, not exactly full of confidence and with a qualifier who could be annoying to face. I’m not thrilled, but it all still depends on Wu. Enough to back him at 1.32? Not at all, no, I’d even understand a bet on Bolt, but I don’t think I’d take the shot myself. Wu may have had a dip after his excellent comeback to competition and he’s arriving fresh/motivated, the restart begins today!