The specialist of tight matches

Kecmanović won 7-6 in the third set in the first round. I feel like every tournament, it’s kind of the same scenario for him. Often with a loss, it’s true, but the matches are incredibly close.

It wasn’t a great first round, especially the first set, which was an absolute daylight robbery from Kecmanovic. Then the match got stopped at a very important moment in the second set. It was all a bit of a mess, and it felt like it just had to finish in a deciding tie-break. Kecmanovic held his nerve a bit better and came through, but I still found him really laboured once again. He’s really the kind of player who, when he struggles to find his game, looks downright bad. But this win could restore some confidence, since he hasn’t been winning many matches lately. I don’t really like Kecmanovic’s form, but he does have this ability to hang in there and suffer that really commands respect.

Another player who’s been struggling this season is Rinderknech. The Frenchman is barely managing to hold his own week after week, and I generally find him very overrated in terms of odds, considering the performances he’s putting in. He’s often priced like a rock-solid top-30 guy, but in the end he’s been a huge disappointment this year.

He rarely loses with one-sided scorelines because he has excellent serving quality and he’s a competitor. But he’s really having a hard time getting back to his level. Maybe this hard-court swing can be good for him, since he has a few reference points in this part of the world and hard is probably his best surface. But he’s clearly coming in short of form and, quite simply, short of matches. He’s playing very little.

The match-up is more in his favour though, since Kecmanovic is really not great against big servers and aggressive baseliners. The Serb likes to grind and have a battle. When the rhythm is too broken, he loses some of his threat. That makes it a pretty tricky situation, because I prefer the match-up for Rinderknech, but I much prefer Kecmanovic’s form, even if the Serb isn’t exactly shining either. Let’s say the content of his matches is a bit more reassuring.