The return of the prodigal son

Arthur Fils is back. He’s going to have to get straight into the swing of things with a tricky first round against Collignon, not to mention the rest of his Wimbledon draw, which is just awful.

The important thing lies elsewhere. Fils mainly wants to reassure himself physically in this tournament and get ready for the end of the season. His body is still fragile, but he’s learning how to manage it, and we can count on him to play this tournament only if he knows it can hold up, or even better. He’ll still have to adapt straight away to grass and get some rhythm back however he can. For now, we have an exhibition match against Tommy Paul to rely on, where he lost 7–6 6–1, possibly with a big drop in intensity in the second set, but I didn’t see the match and I don’t have more information than that. Obviously, that will be the big tricky point for him to handle, because it’s a long format and his game is very physical. Drops in intensity are to be expected.

On Collignon’s side, we saw an excellent level in Halle before he surprisingly lost to JM Cerundolo. The Belgian is still quite inconsistent within his matches. Sometimes he wants to play too fast all the time and can’t hold himself back. He also has a big temperament and needs to manage himself better. I obviously believe he has huge potential on any surface, but I prefer the speed in Halle rather than the courts at Wimbledon.

As for the match-up, it’s pretty hard to say. I don’t know what mindset Fils will be coming in with. Does he know he doesn’t have the physical condition to last in a long match? Is he going to try to play very hard, very fast, with quite a lot of looseness? Or does he already feel strong enough and will he slow things down and just play his best tennis, plain and simple? In any case, it’s a big match ahead of us. And if we could know for sure about Arthur’s physical condition, I’d simply say that he’s the better player, without a shadow of a doubt, even on grass.