A home player in danger?

Landaluce could have hoped for a better draw for his debut, because facing Struff on a fast surface is very often a real minefield.

We all know Struff’s ability to pull off upsets against local players or just players who are better than he is. His tennis profile is a nightmare for his opponents. He really serves like a cannon, attacks on return and in rallies whenever he can, and comes forward to the net. When he’s on fire, he stops his opponents from settling into their game and almost everything depends solely on him. But it goes both ways. On a bad day, when his serve drops a bit or his baseline game isn’t dialed in, he’ll just lose while playing really badly. With him it’s always a bit of those two extremes, trying to figure out when he’s in form and when he isn’t. And here, it’s even harder. I thought he was decent in Stuttgart, but not exceptional. He barely scraped past Gallarno in the first round and could clearly have gone out in the third set before taking a set off Bublik. That’s Struff in a nutshell. On the other hand, he did win the doubles title afterwards, which explains why he skipped Halle, I suppose.

On Landaluce’s side, the Spaniard confirmed his potential on grass with a good tournament in Stuttgart and a 7–6 loss in the deciding tie-break against Fritz. Then he came through qualifying in Halle and this time lost in the deciding tie-break to Atmane. I like what he brings on this surface; his serving quality is impeccable at the moment. He’s disciplined in making opponents play from the baseline, powerful, relatively mobile for his size and for the surface, and mentally he’s a good competitor. I see him as better than Struff in every area, especially in terms of solidity and consistency. If I had to choose between the two over 100 matches, I’d pick Landaluce every single time. But Struff is so capable of producing exceptional matches that sometimes he can overturn players who are better than he is.