Mensik, the survivor.

The Czech surprised everyone by beating two players while he was completely exhausted on the court at the end of his win over Navone.

It's even crazier than that, given that he lost the first set 6–0 to De Minaur. A comeback seemed impossible, considering how much he’d given in the previous round, but he really played like hardened steel. He can also thank De Minaur, who completely missed his match. In the end, the Czech was able to recover. The match wasn’t even very physical or long. And I think he’ll still have plenty of resources left for the next round. Speaking of the next round, he’ll be facing Rublev. There too, we could get a long match, with a lot of physical and mental intensity.

The Russian got past Borges in a broadly controlled match, where he had a few small dips in intensity, but every time he needed to step it up to get back in front, he did it properly. He had a little scare, especially with his back. He took a medical timeout. He remained very vague and evasive about it in the press conference. He doesn’t want to reveal too much and says it even helped him relax in the third set. It’s rather suspicious and even worrying, I’d say. I don’t really like it, and I’m pretty cooled off about his pre‑match win prospects. I think we need to try to quickly figure out whether he really has an issue or not and act accordingly.

If we assume everything’s fine on that front, does his victory suddenly look much clearer? I’m not so sure. He lost both times when he played against Mensik. And I don’t think the match-up is particularly great for him. I think he can do well by playing his best tennis, but it’s not a super straightforward match either. I also haven’t forgotten that the Russian has played a lot at the start of this tournament and that physical freshness isn’t really on his side either. He’s supposed to be the stronger one in that regard, but without having a huge margin, in my opinion.