This Fearnley is good!

The Brit is really coming back strong right now and reminds everyone that he can play at a top level.

Quite a few Challenger wins for Fearnley, who is starting to be effective again on the secondary circuit and will want to capitalize on that later in the bigger tournaments.

I saw his win in qualifying yesterday against a pretty inspired Ofner, especially in the first set. You had to be wary of the Austrian and tighten up your game, which Fearnley did perfectly before Ofner then seriously dropped in intensity. It’s a great win from the Brit and he’s finding his best tennis again. A major threat to keep an eye on.

His biggest weak point is still the quality of his second serve; he can rack up double faults, but recently that seems to have settled down a bit. To sum it all up, there have been almost only positives these last few weeks.

Let’s move on now to Mannarino, who was very surprising last week in Washington. Our beloved Frenchman beat Tien with a magnificent performance before losing to the very in-form Michelsen, but he certainly deserved better than a straight-sets defeat. What he’s doing at the moment is very good and he has already played well in the past on this kind of tour too, which is rather reassuring. We’re in for a good match: we’ve got two players who don’t shy away from grinding from the baseline and who can both extend rallies. It could be quite an open match because they’re not excellent servers.

A small edge in that area still goes to the Frenchman, who has that lefty serve and is more consistent on his service games, but I can easily see several breaks in this match.

We all agree that Fearnley is coming back strong, but is that enough to make him a big favorite as he’s being rated right now? Personally, I’m not so convinced, given Mannarino’s excellent performance last week. For me, the Frenchman clearly has the level to hold his own and turn this into a real battle.