And why not?

The Frenchman rarely shows up at ATP tournaments on the main tour, but when he does, he’s dangerous.

I immediately think of Roland-Garros where he played an absolutely monstrous match in the first round before managing to take a set off Djokovic. He almost did the same thing at Wimbledon, really pushing Zverev hard in the third set. We know he’s capable of playing very well in certain sets, but the whole difficulty with him lies in maintaining his level over entire matches. He gave us the perfect demonstration of that in his opening match yesterday against Carreño Busta, where he got blown away 6-1 while playing all over the place before finding his rhythm and finishing really strong. Admittedly, his opponent was completely spent in the third set, but Royer grew into the match and showed a good level of play.

A top player is waiting for him in the next round, or at least a top player on paper, because Paul left us with a dreadful performance in Washington for his comeback tournament after getting married. We’ve already seen this situation with other players coming off a wedding, and they usually looked rather sharp, which wasn’t the case for Paul last week. With a full week of rest and a Masters 1000 to play, we can expect a good level from him, but he still has to prove it, given that as a seeded player to watch in the early rounds, he’s rarely convincing and takes time to get going. In other words, if Royer starts very strong with the same level as yesterday and keeps it up, he might have something big to go after.

I’m quite torn about the match because I think that when Paul is playing well, he does everything just a bit better than Royer. He plays with more intensity on both sides and just as much aggression. He moves a bit better too, and he’s almost like an upgraded version of the Frenchman. However, we’d need to see the best version of Paul, which might not show up for a full set. In that situation, Royer could have a slight edge.