I’m on a roll with them!

After Jacquet and Halys, it’s now Droguet’s turn for me to analyze. Like the other French players, he’s in great form at the moment and could dream of a win here.

Serious level of play from Titouan Droguet, who’s putting together a run of strong tournaments at the moment and handling his transition to hard courts really well, with some very solid performances in Montreal last week, including a very tight loss against future finalist Nakashima. Everything seems to be going his way right now, and on top of that he managed to qualify without losing a single set against Popyrin and the Greek player Sakellaridis.

He’s confirming his great momentum and also avoiding long, draining matches in tough conditions. That’s something to keep an eye on for him, and yes, I’m going to talk yet again about his little physical issues, which do seem a bit less present lately, to be fair. Normally, he’s a player who can cramp pretty easily and completely throw away a set because he’s exhausted. But it’s been a few matches now where the battle has been tough, and yet I don’t see him fading like he usually does. Maybe he’s got a bit more in the tank physically and believes in himself more at the moment, given the quality of his tennis, which can help him push his limits. In any case, he should be able to hold up in this first round, but we still need to keep an eye on him.

Things aren’t great on Berrettini’s side, who ended up having a great Roland-Garros and then a great Wimbledon, but didn’t manage his comeback in Montreal. Before the tournament, he said he was mainly targeting a peak in form for the US Open, and it seems clear he’s now playing almost exclusively for the big events. He played a very poor match against Navone last week in every department. His serve quality was worse, his return was dreadful, and even physically I found him really on the edge. I also saw a video of him in practice where he gets angry and throws his racquet into the stands, which is still very rare for a player like him. He also made a few comments where he mentioned he clearly doesn’t feel like forcing himself to play matches right now, that he wants to play when he feels like it, and that he had a few issues before Montreal, without saying what they were. So I’m not very optimistic for him; I think this is more of a warm-up event than a real goal for him this week. That said, we know his mentality: he’s not going to tank the match. Sure, he was bad against the Argentine last week, but he believed until the end and did everything he could to win. You can’t write him off.

As for the upcoming match-up, I don’t think Berrettini will be too happy to face this type of opponent, because Droguet is a real baseline grinder, who makes you hit ball after ball and counterattacks brilliantly. If the Frenchman manages to at least get a few decent returns back on the Italian’s serve, then to me he has a serious edge in the match-up.