Rats duelsss

I hope this match won’t be scheduled in the first slot, otherwise it’s going to push back the whole schedule afterwards!

You see two Argentinians in a long format, so of course you expect an epic match that can last for hours, but the reality is different. Actually, we’ve got two players going through a bit of a rough patch who aren’t playing their best tennis anymore; this whole thing pretty much smells like a flop.

It’s more obvious with Baez, who’s drifting through the clay season like a ghost and confirming that outside the Golden Swing, what he’s doing is really damn poor. He started strong this season, surprising everyone, then he disappeared, the Argentine is hard to follow. I’ve been laying him pretty heavily for a while now, and even in his wins he’s grinding like crazy, and this time he’s coming in with zero confidence. Last year he got knocked out in the first round by Kecmanovic: started strong then completely faded. That’s the pattern we’ve been seeing lately, so we’ll be on the lookout!

Burruchaga doesn’t seem to be struggling as much at first glance, given that he had a big tournament in Houston, but after that? He held things together at a Challenger in Cagliari, then got bounced cleanly in Rome, and not much else; it was mostly his attitude that bothered me in the last tournaments. Head down, lack of fight at times, I didn’t find him in it at all. I suspect a drop-off is coming, it’s already happening but in an even more pronounced way. I can grant you that he seems a bit less bad than Baez right now, but I’m not sure that’s really the case.