Who is the real favorite?

Between Collignon, ultra consistent and rarely bad, and a Bellucci who’s been particularly in form since the start of the grass-court season, it’s not easy to put one clearly above the other.

Surface change but no problem for Collignon, who came through qualies without dropping a set in three matches; he got broken only once, in his very first service game in Q1. Despite his lack of reference points on this surface, he’s learning fast and in the long run I don’t think he’ll be too bad on it, he knows how to stay low on his legs and make the opponent play with intelligence. Will he be as good on grass as he is elsewhere? Not so sure, it’s a special surface and I found him good but not exceptional in his win over Popyrin. This isn’t prime Collignon at the moment and I’m not convinced it will be the case tomorrow either.

Bellucci is pretty much the confirmation of what we’d recently seen from him on clay: he’s coming back into form. He really likes grass, he’s not afraid to slide and he seems to be having a blast as well. He played well in Stuttgart last week and is backing it up with three more wins this week, including one over Bublik; he’s in great form, and we know that in these moments his ceiling is very, very high. He leads 2–0 against Collignon, including a win on grass in 2023, which doesn’t mean that much because Collignon has exploded since then, but I think Bellucci is still a bit ahead on grass and in terms of recent form he’s got nothing to envy Collignon for.