An overexcited guy and a dude who doesn’t care...

Rublev is going to fire himself up and get worked up for both of them in this match, up against Machac's legendary composure.

I hate analyzing Machac because, like some other players on the tour, he’s capable of completely throwing away his matches. In general, when we see him in the quarterfinals, we know it’s fine, we can trust him, but here he’s only had to play one match unfortunately. A win over Baez with lots of ups and downs, then a walkover against Alcaraz, that doesn’t help us much even if I feel the current trend on the Czech side is positive; he said in Monte Carlo that he can finally play again without injury and that’s got to feel good for him. Maybe that’s what was still stopping him from having some consistency; in any case, I’m counting on him tomorrow to play a good match.

Rublev is kind of the same: we know that as soon as he gets going, he’s a top-10 player, and the danger for him is mainly in the early rounds. The one against Navone was a real test, and I’m not going to say it was a great win against Sonego because the Italian is still far from his max level since he’s coming back from injury. I’m still being cautious, but in my opinion we’re going to get a good version of Rublev during this clay stretch, he likes it when conditions are slow. Machac leads 1–0 in the H2H, not much to take from it, it was two years ago on hard. I like the match-up for Machac because he can handle Rublev’s pace while counterpunching really hard; it instantly makes me think of Bergs beating Rublev in Monte Carlo by playing super fast.

Machac is capable of doing it but his game is erratic, you really have to manage to get a feel for him; for me this match is going to go all over the place with a lot of breaks…