Another battle between French players.

This tournament in Hertogenbosch is going well for our French players. And we have two more potential outsiders here for the title?

A successful start for Mannarino, who took out the defending champion Diallo in a really very strange match with several twists and turns.

The match wasn’t of great quality, I found him super passive most of the time, and he could have got caught at the end of the match, but Diallo kind of collapsed. I don’t really know what to make of it, because beating the defending champion and a player as annoying to face as Diallo is still a good performance for Mannarino. It’s a tournament he particularly likes, and we know how dangerous he is on grass. I can believe he’ll raise his level as the week goes on. But yeah, it wasn’t super convincing either.

As for Rinderknech, he played two matches on grass in an exhibition, but he’s going to have to properly kick off his season.

We think of his serving quality, his net play, and his mentality, which can work well on grass. He’s already had very good results in the past but I don’t think his average level of play is very high. He often mentions that he likes having time to set up his game. This surface is a bit of a double-edged sword for him because on return it can be very fast and sometimes very slow. The grass in ’s‑Hertogenbosch can give him enough time but maybe even a bit too much. When I picture him facing Mannarino’s very low, dead ball, I tell myself he won’t necessarily enjoy having to attack those. I rather feel that this kind of match depends largely on Mannarino and not really on Arthur.

When I look at his season more broadly, I don’t feel like he’s having an exceptional year by consistently showing a very high level. In general, he wins one or two matches, but that’s it. Yet we keep seeing him as a player who plays at his ranking every week, which isn’t necessarily true, and maybe even less so on grass.