The beast

I'm talking about Collignon this time, the Belgian is a big one to take on this season!

Titled last week in Monza without dropping a set, Collignon keeps marching forward and manages his schedule by mixing Challengers and big tournaments afterward. For now it’s working really well: he shows up confident every time and lives up to expectations. The last tournament he played was Miami and I can tell you he was a monster there. Between Challengers, Futures matches, etc., he’s already at 129 wins on clay at just 24 years old, which shows how comfortable he is on the surface. He can play well everywhere and comes in overconfident, this guy is a real threat.

A threat that Berrettini will have to neutralize with his serve and his clutch factor, but I still feel like the Italian is definitely past his prime. Sometimes he manages to take out top players and play a big match, but he never backs it up and ends up putting in average performances afterward, even though his body is holding up for now. When I look back at his wins this year, I tell myself we probably see him as better than he really is. He doesn’t beat anyone except out-of-form players or in a labored way, and his two big-name wins, Bublik and Medvedev, with hindsight I feel like they happened because he had two wildcards in front of him who can lose to anyone, not really because Berrettini was on fire. I really want to be convinced, but it has to be said that Berrettini in 2026 is pretty underwhelming. We immediately think of altitude conditions for his serve, but whether it was Santiago or Marrakech, where we were expecting him in fast/altitude conditions, he disappointed both times.

Against a guy as tenacious and strong as Collignon, we’ll need top-level Berrettini to get the win, and I’ll even go further and say that for me Collignon is clearly the favorite in this matchup.