Nothing to worry about

Rublev is supposed to win fairly easily, but with him nothing is ever easy

It wasn’t amazing for his first round, but a straight-sets win against Navone on slow clay is a good win, plain and simple. It’s impressive that he managed to get through it, and I quite like the conditions for him. He’s got another winnable round and could build on it to get his confidence back. His second-round match is against Sonego; the Italian is coming back from several months out injured and his first match really wasn’t great, he was just the less bad one, let’s say. On the other hand, he once again proved that he plays with his heart when everything else isn’t at its best, especially physically where he really had to dig deep in the last set. He took an MTO for a foot issue, but I rather suspect it was cramp, he’s a crafty one.

This second match will be tougher, the level goes up and after several months out he’s going to struggle to back matches up; that’s the big issue and it’s pretty common in general: a guy coming back from injury is competitive in the first match and then things fall apart. He’s also trailing 4–2 in the head-to-head against Rublev, his two wins came at Roland Garros and in Rome. The rest is in Rublev’s favour and it all depends on him: between the quality of his serve, the intensity he puts into his shots and his power, which is going to bother Sonego especially on the backhand side, I see him winning logically tomorrow.