Another Frenchman in good form.

We still have quite a few French players who are playing really well at the moment and who are capable of pulling off a few upsets. Jacquet hasn’t had any big results recently, but he’s close—his level is definitely there anyway.

Very good tournament in Estoril where he notably beat Merida before getting a match point against Blockx. He followed it up in Montreal after coming through qualifying and played a great match against Diallo who, in my opinion, maybe played his best match of the season against him. It’s a good spell and Jacquet has just come through qualifying at this tournament by beating Harris and Kjaer, two players who can be a pain sometimes, but I rate the Frenchman above them, especially right now. He’s capable of playing well on fast courts, he’s a pretty explosive player who goes for his chances and doesn’t hesitate to try things. I also like his mentality; in short, there are a lot of positive factors on his side. He comes in with form and confidence and will also have the advantage of the surface compared to Vallejo, who for now is only really good on clay and still needs to bulk up his game to play well elsewhere.

The Paraguayan has stalled a bit after his start to the season, when he was stringing together a bunch of wins at Challenger level, but almost exclusively on clay. For his return to hard courts last week, he lost 6–3, 6–3 to Shang in a match of fairly low quality. Even though he got the break in the second set, it wasn’t really deserved, and for me, Shang had a good margin over him. He’s a pure clay-courter who likes to put a lot of balls in play from both sides, but he can be so impatient and make a lot of errors! You can feel that this isn’t his natural surface and that he’s still looking for the right balance between patience and aggression. For me, he was dangerous at the start of the year when he was riding his winning streaks, but since then, something has kind of broken, and now he’s struggling. Unlike other clay specialists like Navone or Burruchaga, who are capable of putting in good performances on faster courts and bothering some strong hard-court players, I don’t yet have the impression that this is the case for Vallejo.

For a first meeting, you can obviously give the edge to Jacquet, who is simply playing better at the moment and whose qualities for performing on this surface are more obvious. As for the match-up itself, I’d say I’m not too worried about having a solid baseliner against Jacquet, because the Frenchman has enough power and forward-thinking tennis to manage to impose his rhythm. If his price is high, I’ll be on his side.