Can you feel it, this snooze-fest of a match?

I sure can. Between two players who are excellent servers and lousy returners, this is likely to end up revolving around tie-breaks.

I was expecting to see a slightly more motivated Griekspoor after he found his smile again at the UTS, but the Dutchman was still far from enjoying himself on court in Washington during his loss to Tabilo. Still, you can put this first-round defeat into perspective given the tournament Tabilo went on to have. I have to say I didn’t feel like it was a bad Griekspoor, he just ran into someone very strong on the other side, and it was a tight match, similar to what he’s expecting tomorrow.

As for Sonego, he’s coming off a loss at the Gstaad tournament against Collignon, a match he really could have taken. But again, it’s not a worrying defeat at all. I don’t know why he didn’t follow up with the other tournaments. That’s what worries me a bit, given that he often has physical issues.

There’s no information about why he hasn’t played a match since. At a push, I can understand him skipping Washington and Los Cabos, but why didn’t he play Kitzbuhel, for example? In any case, during his loss to Collignon, I didn’t see any obvious physical problem. He’ll need to be monitored for the upcoming match. As I said, it’s shaping up to be very tight. The two players do more or less the same things and have the same strengths. The only quite clear difference is in the mental side of things, with Sonego always combative and with a perfect attitude, even if the level is sometimes missing, which is not at all the case with Griekspoor, who can let go at any time and also show a bit of laziness.

Sonego won here in Montreal two years ago in a very hard-fought match. I honestly couldn’t say if either one really has an advantage, because it’s tight.