Does he still have any gas left?

A match with loads of twists and turns last night, with Titouan Droguet coming out of the blocks at full speed, playing very aggressive tennis on the damp clay in Umag, and it works: his attacking game cuts right through his opponent’s defense and he wins the first set quite easily, 6 games to 1. Then, a somewhat more timid start to the second set, with his opponent telling himself it’s a new match starting and beginning to tighten up his game and be a bit more aggressive as well. We very quickly see that Titouan has a significant physical dip and that he’s coming forward to the net quite often, shortening the points and committing errors. And that goes on for almost two sets until Luca serves for the match, gets a bit shaky, and ends up in a mess that ultimately comes down purely to mental strength.

From this match, we can take away that Titouan will surely play relaxed today, very relaxed even, with very aggressive tennis because he doesn’t have enough energy to play a proper clay-court match, especially as he’s playing his third match in three days today, two of which went to three sets and were in the night session, and he’s playing again today in the first rotation against the Spaniard Merida, who put in a very good performance against Tomas Echeverry, who is normally a real fighter and should have made the Spaniard fall apart if the latter hadn’t been in such good form. But Merida managed to break through the Argentine’s defense and resilient game. If he plays at the same level, there’s still a very high chance he wins today’s match against a tired Titouan who, at some point, will have to lay down his weapons if he sees that the opposition is too strong.