A divine bald man who’s regained all his splendor

First grass-court tournament and straight into a quarter-final for our favorite bald guy

CotMannarino is showing off his grass-court know-how at the start of this tournament; taking out Rinderknech and Diallo is a good performance that reminds everyone that on grass he’s built differently. Good wins, but the level of play has been fairly laboured though; I’d say it’s a decent Mannarino, nothing more. He’ll need to raise his level, but could that still be enough once again in the next round?

And yes, because it’s “only” Zhang on the other side of the net. I respect the Chinese player, who can be razor-sharp when his attacking tennis is clicking, but his ceiling is still pretty average overall. He’s just played a good match against Brooksby and beat Griekspoor while being rock solid on serve. My only issue is the level of his opponents: Brooksby was completely out of it and Griekspoor totally missed his match too. Zhang deserves credit, he himself was really good, but I want to see what he does against a stronger guy. Mannarino is less impressive, but he’s hard to maneuver and logically he shouldn’t blow his match.

I find the match-up is pretty dependent on Zhang’s serve quality. If the Chinese player manages to protect himself enough with his serve, then he can have a shot, but if he doesn’t get enough free points, he’ll end up stuck in baseline rallies without any real solutions.