A local player to watch out for?

In this tournament, we pay very close attention to local players, who can surpass themselves in this very special event. Can Maestrelli take advantage of this and get back into form?

After an interesting and even promising start to the season on hard courts, Maestrelli has completely faded and still hasn’t won a match on clay this season. It’s not his best surface in my opinion, but he still knows how to play on it. He’s a big guy, with good serving quality and fairly heavy shots, and more of a player you’d consider aggressive rather than a true grinder or clay-court specialist.

His recent form is disastrous and it will take a real transformation for him to be able to win this first round. On the positive side, during qualifying in his last two appearances at this tournament, he played good matches against good players. I think he’s exactly the kind of player who can surpass himself thanks to the crowd. I also believe he can take advantage of a rather heavy and slow clay to have time to set his feet and hit hard, the way he likes to.

In any case, he has a real full-scale test against Bautista Agut, who is continuing his farewell tour on the tournaments. He’s not at all the kind of player who takes that lightly; he’ll show professionalism and seriousness right to the end, that’s just who he is.

This season, he’s really struggling and has only beaten very weak players. I honestly feel he’s in trouble physically as soon as matches drag on a bit too long, and I also think he really struggles to make a difference from the baseline, given that he lacks power. But that’s been even more obvious over the last few months. His track record in Rome is very decent. I think that at his peak, he was an extremely difficult player to hit through here, and capable of playing marathon matches. But right now, in 2026, that could almost work against him.

In terms of the match-up, I picture Maestrelli in an attacking role that suits him very well, putting good pressure on the return, if possible, and getting a few free points on serve given that Bautista is not a good returner. I think the Spaniard can also throw him off his game, but it’s still more complicated for him to do that now that he’s on the decline.