The final before its time.

When you see that on the other side it's Kovacevic against Buse, you can think that the winner of this semi-final between de Minaur and Paul will go all the way afterwards.

We clearly have the two best players of the tournament facing off in this semifinal. Starting with de Minaur, who came in with no confidence and even huge doubts, since he could barely put one foot in front of the other and was searching for his tennis. What he’s doing this week is much better, but it’s still quite fragile. You can feel he’s ready to implode in his head at any moment.

He’s just beaten Darderi 6–0, 6–3, a scoreline that doesn’t really reflect the match, because de Minaur was so clinical, notably saving 11 out of 12 break points. It was already the case against Fokina with 10 out of 13 break points saved, and also in the first round against Cerundolo with 9 out of 14 break points saved. He’s being incredibly efficient this week, but that also means he’s struggling on his own service games and can be had.

I’m insisting a lot on the service games because for me it’s one of the key factors in their match tomorrow. For the simple reason that this week, Paul has decided to be even more aggressive than usual and to come to the net whenever he gets the chance. We saw him come forward over 50 times against Echeverry, and he did it again against Altmaier with a superb 24 out of 26 points won at the net in a relatively short match.

He’s made a great impression on me this week, he seems determined to go all the way, just like de Minaur obviously. As for the match-up itself, de Minaur leads the head-to-head by a fair margin, but each of their matches is tight. And I personally think that on clay, Paul has a slight edge in terms of the maximum level of play he can produce on the surface, but it depends a lot on his form.

This forward-playing, net-rushing style might be exactly what Paul was missing to turn his matches against de Minaur in his favor in the past, but this week he’s excelling in that pattern and it’s, in my opinion, the right way to hurt de Minaur.