Indecisive match...

Kyrian is much better here than in Umag. He plays the qualies and doesn’t put pressure on himself in Q2 because he knows he’s going to be an LL anyway. In R1, he beats the Umag champion. Predictable? In any case, yes, Merida was inevitably in worse physical shape. But I also think we’ve found the Frenchman from Roland Garros again. The one who fights and doesn’t just attack like crazy hoping it’ll go in.

On the other side, Blockx seems to have become a bit inconsistent since coming back from injury. I saw him get annoyed in practice here, and he gave up in the deciding set in Umag against Droguet. He’s no longer the incredible clay-courter we saw at the start of the season. That break really hurt him. I’d still like to see him play a match here before drawing a firm conclusion, because I’m honestly quite unsure. If he plays well, of course he holds the keys to the match. But on slow, windy clay with a few bad bounces, old man Kyrian could really trouble him by moving him around. The advantage is that the Frenchman knows how to play aggressively and come to the net if Blockx pulls the same “unhittable wall” act we saw in Monte Carlo. But I don’t think he can be that good at that game anymore, and I think he’ll play more aggressively.