Wawrinka comes back to a tournament that means a lot to him.

This is where he played his first tournament on the ATP Tour and he’s at home here. Will he be able to feed off that to give us a great match?

I feel like believing in Wawrinka, who is still showing an astonishingly good level of play this season. His very tight loss to Berrettini at Wimbledon, when not much was expected of him, is proof of that. The Swiss needs to earn free points on his serve and in rallies, and this kind of tournament can really help him hold serve and stay competitive in tight ends of sets. That’s more or less what I think we can expect in this match-up.

I’m not sure that will be enough for him to get the win, because he has a tough draw. However, he still has what it takes to hang in there.

The tough draw in question is Faria. The Portuguese player is on a real rise this season. He’s going to start entering main draws directly, which will save him a lot of energy instead of battling through qualifying. I have to say that every time I’ve seen him this season, I’ve been pretty convinced by what he’s shown. His tennis is really very solid and complete. He just has a few errors on second-serve and mentally, where he can suddenly collapse. That’s what we saw in his last match at Wimbledon against Bergs, where he had plenty of chances he couldn’t convert before completely losing his footing. I think that in terms of pure level of play, he has all the qualities and all the weapons to get the better of Wawrinka, but this first round is not straightforward for him. He has to get his tournament going, play against a local favorite who will have about 100% of the crowd behind him and who is still playing at a good level. If Stan starts strong and plays aggressive, hard-hitting tennis, to the point of making Faria doubt himself, then the Portuguese could start to tighten up and get frustrated.

Unfortunately, there’s a certain pattern that tends to repeat itself for Wawrinka this season: he plays great matches and great battles, but ends up losing in the end. That still seems like the most likely scenario, with a defeat like 7–6, 7–6 or in a third set, when he might start to struggle physically.