Fritz sad

Fritz was beaten in the final in Stuttgart by Shelton in a match he surely would have deserved to win, but he prefers to see the positive side and, indeed, it was his first good tournament since coming back from injury.

With hindsight, he actually put together an excellent tournament. It's true that at the start it was impulsive and that he came close to losing in the first two rounds, but when you see the level of Landaluce and then Bellucci, those were tricky matches and the American ended up pulling through, which is the most important thing.

He beat Bublik and produced a really big match against Shelton. He got done in by Ben’s clutch factor. What matters lies elsewhere: his knee seems to be leaving him alone for now, and he’s regained confidence by stringing together good matches. We know his potential on grass, and now he’s up and running.

We also know Bergs’ potential on this surface, but he’s going to have to get back into it quickly, because he was knocked out in the first round in Hertogenbosch and comes in with only one match in his legs. When you see how important that is. The cool little thing is that he’s played quite a few doubles matches, which could help him arrive a bit sharper this week. I think he’s more than capable of beating top-level players when he manages to find his game, because he’s got a pretty impressive brand of tennis. However, he often misses his matches, piling up double faults, getting frustrated, and failing to find a way out. It’s this lack of consistency that worries me a bit against a player who doesn’t do anything exceptional, but who remains very strong on serve and relatively solid from the baseline all the time.

Given Fritz’s current confidence and his consistency compared to Zizou, who’s a bit all over the place, I’m going to say Fritz should get through this.