A Familiar Place

Can the 2024 Montreal Champion turn his season around here?

Well, he definitely could use a big run in this tournament. His season so far has been pretty much disastrous, with 9 wins and 19 losses. Before beating Kokkinakis (through a retirement) in the first round, he was on a five-match losing streak, including against Svajda in Roland Garros as a 1.10 favorite and Andrade in Vancouver CH as a 1.18 favorite! It was quite visible in his match against Lehecka in Wimbledon as well; he looked completely out of ideas and belief when I watched it. His match against Kokkinakis was not bad at all, and now he has a really manageable opening round draw! Burruchaga is having his breakthrough season on the main tour, mainly with his run to the finals in Houston and then also the semifinals in Umag a bit more recently. When clay-courters are having these kinds of good results on the main tour, they actually tend to have some decent matches on non-clay surfaces as well, purely riding the wave of confidence. However, that tends to be at the peak of their form; it's hard for them to maintain, since their playstyle is generally not so well-suited for hardcourt and grass! This holds especially true when they come up against players who are "hardcourt specialists", as Medvedev would put it ;)

Actually, it reminds me a little bit of the other first-round match we had, Shang against Vallejo. We also had a clay-courter who is having a breakthrough season facing someone who is simply much better on hardcourts (but did not have any recent form). Since the contrast in form is so big, it usually means that the odds on the non-clay-courter tend to be quite interesting! Let's see if this is the case once again?