Still breaking in

Musetti wants to get his confidence back and is coming to play Barcelona even though it wasn’t planned!

It really wasn’t great against Vacherot; sure, the draw was brutal, especially since he’s clearly lacking rhythm/confidence, but in terms of level of play he was disappointing. Physically, he dipped after a set and a half and was really running on fumes at the end of the match, which is his main problem every time he comes back from injury. Now he’s in Barcelona where he wants to string a few wins together and regain confidence, but once again he’s been unlucky with the draw, facing the Spaniard Landaluce, who’s been playing his best tennis for a few weeks now. The Spaniard has just made a Challenger semifinal for his return to competition after his breakout in Miami; he beat some fairly unimpressive players and lost to Collignon, whom I rate as a top-30 player this season. A good return to competition, and now we’ll see what he can do on slow clay. I’m torn, because he’ll have time to set up his shots and that’s positive, but on the other hand, if it’s really slow and he doesn’t get many free points on serve/in short patterns, he risks getting punished.

Musetti is supposed to be tailor-made to blow up this kind of profile, but the Italian still isn’t at his top level and Landaluce is coming in overconfident. He can play very loose, free-flowing tennis and really go after the Italian’s backhand, or he can just crash and burn, overforce and never find the solution. I’d say the trend leans toward seeing a resilient Spaniard who’s capable of holding his own and potentially pulling off the upset!