Perfect flip

After the best week of his life on grass, Daniel Altmaier arrives in Eastbourne!

While for many players the week before Wimbledon can be taken pretty casually, I think for Altmaier it can serve as a kind of follow-up springboard with the aim of pulling off something at Wimbledon. There are still quite a few things to put in place with Dustin Brown. A slow grass court that could really suit his protégé, not too far from London, I think that’s a good setup. And that’s quite important when analyzing Daniel, because when his heart is in it, he’s not the same player.

On the other side, Kovacevic has good qualities for grass, but also a major weakness: his one-handed backhand. That said, he’s exactly in that range where he can play the bigger grass-court tournaments and ends up facing really strong guys. There are some good things, very good even, but he’s too inconsistent. Maybe he’ll take advantage of this somewhat awkward week for the players?

Their head-to-heads have historically been very tight, but none on grass. I don’t really know how to approach Daniel because grass isn’t usually his strong suit, but here there’s an X factor with his previous tournament and Dustin Brown. That leads to slightly scrappy matches with lots of breaks, and then a thrashing he took from Tiafoe.