Another good trap coming up

Nakashima was supposed to face Fils in the first round, so this change in the draw is beneficial, yes, but how much?

Switching from Fils to JM Cerundolo looks nice at first, but then you picture the match and you realise it’s actually a pretty damn annoying R1. JM Cerundolo has kept his usual solidity and this season he’s added a serve, heavier shots, an offensive game, a backhand slice and many other things to his game, he’s evolved and the difference is huge. He’s gone from a boring guy who can lose to the world number 500 to a rock‑solid clay courter who can really bother a lot of good players. He came through qualies in Monte-Carlo, then led 7/5 2/0 against Vacherot before completely collapsing. He erased that disappointment by coming through qualies again here this week, easy wins over Zeppieri then De Jong, not big names but simply guys who are now just weaker than him on clay, the logic was respected and he didn’t drop a set, he’s in great shape. Conditions are nice for his game too, it’s slow and perfect for him.

So it’s another trap waiting for Nakashima after his loss to Burruchaga in Houston, where he completely lost himself in the rhythm despite a bounce-back in the second set; his level on clay is still rough around the edges, just like I said in the previous analysis. He still has huge serve quality, solid baseline play, but that’s about it; he’s missing that little extra something to really make the difference on clay in particular. I’m not impressed by his last few weeks and now he’s got a really tricky first round waiting for him against a player nobody wants to face on clay. He leads the H2H 2–0 but that’s really anecdotal to me because the matches are old and were on hard/indoor, JM has evolved and on slow clay I think he’s not far from being the favourite now..