Memories of Last Year

Can the Dutchman replicate his 2025 run in Båstad?

De Jong is starting to establish himself more and more on the main ATP tour. We saw him go into the fourth round in the French Open as a lucky loser, followed up by a Challenger title in Italy. He chose not to play any warm-up grass events but still managed to get a five-set comeback win against Hijikata in the first round before being destroyed by Fonseca. Well, now he has to defend his final here, but at least he should be rather accustomed to clay still, not having played a lot on grass. Gaubas did make it through Wimbledon qualifying, surprisingly, but had no answers whatsoever against Jacquet in the first round. He got to the second round in the Braunschweig Challenger in Germany after that, so at least he got two clay matches under his belt already.

While the sample size is rather small, Båstad's first round leans heavily towards the underdog compared to other ATP 250 and clay tournaments. This does make sense, since it's a clay tournament that comes just after a grass Grand Slam tournament - Wimbledon. Players need to adjust, and sometimes the performances from the grass swing are perhaps a bit too reflected in the odds. Either way, both players should be able to adjust rather quickly, since they are comfortable on clay, so perhaps it should not be a big factor this time.

De Jong tends to do quite well against players who lack power like Gaubas... he has the rally tolerance to stick around with him and also the ability to dictate and finish points. Last year, he was serving great, utilizing a decent amount of serve and volley and also coming to the net overall to finish points. I've liked his performances overall for a while now, and he should have some time to settle here, since Gaubas is unlikely to blow him off the court. However, I still want to keep in mind that he is defending a healthy amount of points here and that we could always see a slow start from De Jong...