New trap looming for De Minaur.

The Australian is going through a rough patch, but he’s so unlucky with the draws.

We all agree that De Minaur is struggling, tennis-wise and mentally, and that he hasn’t been able to get out of it for several weeks now. But we also have to highlight the fact that he gets very few easy matches. Every time, he’s up against a local player, a guy in form, or an opponent with a really annoying playing style. For someone lacking confidence and wins, it’s hell. For his return on grass and in this tournament he won in 2024, he’ll be facing Damm right away, the very tall American who serves rockets and gives no rhythm. This is not the first round De Minaur wanted.

Damm came through the qualifiers and just beat Munar relatively easily today. Earlier this year, he already made a breakthrough at an ATP 250 by coming through qualifying. We know he’s capable of raising his level for the duration of a week. He’s a really troublesome player. When his serve is clicking, he’s very hard to break and he takes a lot of risks on the return. He can have some hot games and get breaks in pretty ridiculous fashion. Obviously, he’s far below De Minaur’s average level, but in a match like this, in my opinion, he can have a shot.

The grass isn’t very fast in Hertogenbosch, and this time they’ll be on center court, which gives quite a bit of room to defend, which was less the case on court number 2. ADM has the defensive quality and the grass-court know-how needed to manage to win this type of match. But there’s also a scenario where he struggles too much to break and ends up doing pretty much anything on serve and panicking, given that right now he’s overthinking a lot.