Can anyone stop Jodar?

The Spanish War Machine has been relentless...

Well, we have been writing a lot of previews about Jodar; he's been in a lot of matches lately. A tough run in Washington, a bit of a wrist injury scare in the final against Fritz. A very short turnaround before heading to Montreal, and then having to face two excellent defensive counterpunchers in Moutet and Musetti. Initially, it seems like those would be excellent players to exploit a player's fatigue, right? They can put a lot of balls back and tire Jodar out in longer rallies. Well, the issue is that the matchup itself is just great for Jodar. Both Musetti and Moutet are not the best servers, which is crucial against Jodar, one of the best attacking returners in the game right now. Besides that, neither opponent has a lot of power (their games are more variety-based), which means that Rafael also got quite many short balls to crush, which he absolutely excels at. I have to say that I'm very impressed by Jodar's level; he looks "locked in" and focused for every part of the match.

I have two matches in mind where I actually saw Jodar struggle... the first one was against Darderi in Rome, in a late-night match... where he simply looked a bit tired in the end; he had been on a monstrous run on clay. Besides that one, it was in the final now in Washington against Fritz. Now, that was not a beatdown by any means, but it was an example of what you need to do to prevent Jodar from dominating with his attacking game. Most importantly, the serve is extremely important... as I mentioned, Jodar's return is outstanding, which means that a weak server is simply losing too many points due to this. Apart from this, it's simply about maintaining depth on the shots; you can't allow Jodar to get too deep inside the baseline. Unlike many other aggressive players, Jodar has high rally tolerance and a good amount of patience, so it's not easy to maintain depth for long!

So, does Lehecka fit this profile? He is categorized as a Big Server/Attacking Baseliner, like Fritz. Based on Jodar's stats so far in his young career, as well as the eye test and theory, this is probably one of the more ideal playstyles to have against Jodar. Lehecka does not serve as well as Fritz, but he is still a good server. His backhand is fine also, but it's not as stable as Fritz's BH when it comes to maintaining depth in cross-court rallies. Lastly, I want to just briefly touch on the subject of Jodar's potential fatigue. By all means, he should be starting to feel something now, but we haven't really seen it, have we? Also, the wrist thing seems not to be anything serious, based on the follow-up matches so far in Montreal. Now, he's had a day of rest after a somewhat quick match against Musetti as well... The only thing I can think of is that this day of rest hurts his momentum and all the adrenaline a bit, but perhaps that's just far-fetched...