Did Gea make Khacha doubt himself?

The Frenchman is having a good season and Khacha is far from his best level..

Yeah but Khacha at Roland and more broadly in Paris is always solid! He loves playing here and doesn’t hide it. The Grand Slam format suits him too since he’s physically reliable and his mentality doesn’t let him down easily, he’s a really tough guy to beat over the long haul even when his tennis isn’t at its best. I thought he was pretty “lucky” to have such a good run in Rome considering how his matches actually went, and in Hamburg he confirmed that things still weren’t right: he plays an average match against Gaston then loses to Humbert… He doesn’t do enough damage in rallies and doesn’t really exist on return, it’s not the great Khacha.

Gea is kind of the opposite in terms of results: he’s already at 23 wins this season but most of those are against much weaker players, he doesn’t pull off many big performances and mainly plays Challengers. There have been some shaky losses recently and I feel like he’s missing a little something in his game to really make the difference. Hamburg was good in qualies before he completely lost the plot in R1, especially with an awful level on serve. So far he’s never really played well at Roland, and when you see how he physically collapsed at the Australian Open, I’m afraid he’ll cramp if it turns into a long match. I also think pressure doesn’t necessarily make him play better and that he’ll need a bit of time to really get into his match.

And that’s a real shame because, as I said, Khacha is beatable at the moment. So maybe if the Frenchman serves well and manages to loosen up enough he can pull something off, but right now I don’t really believe it.