Titouan seizes his chance

Droguet took advantage of Auger-Aliassime’s withdrawal to play against a lucky loser and went out and got the win. Why not build on that and go even further.

A win for Droguet, I’d say, who came back from far behind in the first set by saving set points and wearing Faria down, who ended up collapsing. The Frenchman is skilled in that area, he’s a grinder who can make his opponents lose their minds, and that’s what happened yesterday. But careful, because his game is still quite limited, given that physically, he’s not a benchmark at all. I’d also say he got away with it by winning in straight sets yesterday, and Faria played a catastrophic match, with no quality on his first serve and a bunch of double faults. It wasn’t the good version of the Portuguese either, which makes me tone down the performance a bit. It’s true that in the first round he played well against Van Assche, but there too he was up against the wall, just one game away from defeat on his opponent’s serve, and then had to go through a deciding tie-break. In other words, he’s getting through, but it’s very, very tight for Droguet, and tonight the level of opposition goes up another notch.

Nakashima isn’t the most impressive player on tour, but he’s so consistent and hard to beat. He’s a reference point on the circuit for me. He showed it again last week in Washington by playing great matches and beating some very good players above all. He’s confident and has just destroyed a tired Altmaier in the previous round to launch his tournament. That’s good for him: he’s got one match less in his legs, he has confidence, and he’s ready to give everything. Is his game good against Droguet? I’d say yes, because his serve quality is huge and should help him a lot, but let’s not forget that from the baseline he’s a very solid player who doesn’t make many errors and attacks quite intelligently. Sometimes he does play bad matches, that’s true, but it happens very rarely. And I think that can cause problems for Droguet because the Frenchman will have to do a bit more than usual, and I find him a bit worse in every area than Nakashima, even physically.

That’s a small issue on Droguet’s side: he’ll probably have to play one of his best matches to take out a very serious and stable player. Do you think he’s capable of it?