Baez, the opportunist

The Argentine took advantage of a completely exhausted Dimitrov to scrape through, and now he runs into Tien, who is still a bit injured.

It wasn’t great from Baez for a good part of the match against Dimitrov, but he did his best to try to turn things around, and in the end he simply managed to do it. It’s clear that with a burned-out Dimitrov on the other side, that must have helped him believe more and more, and I really liked his attitude at the end, with some great energy on top of that. The level might not be perfect yet, but if tomorrow he feels that Tien is there for the taking and not at his best, then again he’ll reset, believe in it, and could once more pull off an upset. Maybe I’m getting a bit carried away, but in any case I find Baez much more interesting lately, and even if it’s far from perfect, you can rely on his physical and mental qualities most of the time.

On Tien’s side, it’s tricky because the American is clearly hampered by his shoulder injury. He still wants to keep playing, which means he really can’t serve at 100%. But the rest of his game is more than good enough to compensate, as we saw last week. The serve isn’t his main weapon, but it’s still an issue not to be able to serve full throttle. There’s also the question of his physical condition, because he really put in a lot in Montreal and I feel like those who had a good run there are coming in a bit rusty, at least at the start of matches, if not more. When you know Tien’s physical problems when it comes to stringing together full matches without dips, it’s a bit worrying, especially since on the other side you’ve got a Baez who’s built to play long matches.

I’m not a fan of the match-up for Baez, because Tien is much more talented and smarter on court, with a lot more weapons. But as I said, I don’t think that’s the number one angle in this match, to the point where he’ll just clearly and easily dominate Baez. For me, the Argentine will make him play enough and try to blow him up in rallies until he gets his chances at the slightest physical drop from the American.