Struggling at home

Tiafoe needs to find his form ahead of the US Open!

So, it's been a pretty good year so far for Tiafoe, especially considering how poor his 2025 was. Normally, he tends to peak during this part of the season, with a big crowd behind him, on the hard courts in America. However, when a player is indeed playing well in other parts of the season, they can struggle in the places they usually don't; we have seen this quite often (Munar on hard courts vs clay in 2025, as an example). At the same time, let's not be too dramatic. A loss against a good Atmane in Washington. Then he went to Montreal and took out his anger on Cilic in the first round. However, the second round was an absolute no-show against Rinderknech, ending up in a retirement. It turned out that he actually had a cyst removed from his right hand, apparently something that had been bothering him. So, perhaps a little bit of practice that he has had to miss due to this. We know that Tiafoe is focused on Cincinnati, where his game translates well. And then, yeah, following that up at the US Open. For me, he is a player that really feeds off confidence, so it's going to be interesting to see how well he has been able to "reset" ahead of this match.

And it won't be an easy opponent for his first match! Sonego is coming off a solid win in straight-sets against Shang, where he looked rather fired up. We really prefer the Italian when he is playing ultra-aggressive tennis, so I like these conditions for him. Normally, he can struggle against other big hitters, since his return is not the best, even if his own serve is firing. However, he has to be encouraged by a 3-1 H2H against Tiafoe, even if most of these matches were 3-4 years ago. As for Tiafoe, we clearly prefer him against more passive players who lack power; he can really work them with his combination of power and variety. Can you see where I am heading?