Remember Dallas?

Can Shapovalov deliver another beatdown?

Yes, I'm talking about the 6-1, 6-2 massacre that happened in their first round in Dallas earlier this year. Normally, Jodar is the guy who usually delivers these scorelines. This was on a very fast indoor hardcourt, which is Shapovalov's best surface, by far. Nonetheless, Jodar has had some experience on it as well; he has played a few Challengers in America and also the Next Gen finals last year. Anyway, that's in the past, and Jodar has developed quite a bit as a player since then. We've seen him pretty much go deep in every big tournament for a while now. Now, he is coming in red-hot after reaching the finals in Washington and then the semifinals in Montreal, both tournaments played in quite challenging conditions. Not only that, it's not exactly like he has had the easiest of draws either. The Spaniard continues to impress us. We have seen a lot of him recently, and his playstyle and weaknesses are quite "clear-cut" by now. His strengths are without a doubt his very aggressive return of serve, combined with his proficiency when it comes to putting away short balls (that he usually forces with either his return or by having the ability to stay solid from the baseline for a long time).

So, what's the best way to beat him? Well, having a big serve is almost necessary, especially the ability to consistently hit your spots on serve (Fritz & Nakashima). Then, you have to really attack his serve (especially the second serve), which is still one of his weaknesses. That way, he doesn't get to start with a good position inside the baseline. In the rallies themselves, it's all about not "giving up an inch", maintaining depth while still having a good rally tolerance. Yeah, no worries, that's all you have to do ;) In this regard, I would say that Shapovalov's playstyle is not that bad against Jodar, right? He serves big (although not as consistently as Nakashima/Fritz), and he also has the aggression/power to not be consistently pushed back by Jodar. There were doubts regarding his ankle going into his first-round match against Mannarino, but there were no signs of any issues in that match. I think that Denis played it very well; he was very solid in rallies and was serving a rather high 1st serve in %. For me, this match will come down a lot to how Shapovalov serves, especially since it will be a match in the evening/night session, unless the projected thunderstorms today postpone it until tomorrow...