De Jong prefers clay...

One of Roland's heroes is back in a Grand Slam, and I'm wary!

Jesper De Jong ended up getting the 4 withdrawals he needed from Wim to go straight into the main draw. So he’s pleased. In a way, when you look at his qualifying run at Roland, you can say it really helped him. The guy has been building up steam and even benefited from a LL spot. Can we say he’s still riding that wave? Apparently yes, since he just won a Challenger on clay. Even if he was the favorite, you still have to string the wins together. And now he’s ready. He’s got a good serve, plays aggressively, moves well, and comes forward to the net a lot. I think he can really play!

On the other side, Hijikata gets his points on grass, like every season. Yes, but not at Wimbledon. Indeed, the Australian still has quite a low glass ceiling compared to the big grass-court players. With his ranking, there’s a good chance he’ll run into one of those guys early, and then he gets punished. Just look at the beating he took against Ugo Humbert at Queen’s.

Rinky is a super mobile guy, and pretty aggressive. A sort of mini De Minaur. Up to a certain level on grass, he’s going to be hard to beat. But Jesper De Jong played at that level for me at Roland. On grass, he’ll have had 3–4 days of practice. There’s a chance he completely messes it up, you never know with him. But I think there are quite a few positive signs and that he’s going to be hard to beat... He’s played a lot on clay, but he doesn’t really play like a clay-courter. He’s very aggressive, and just with the quality of his serve, he’s going to put Rinky under pressure in quite a few big moments...