Buse’s after-effect

The Peruvian seems a bit burned out after his last few months full of matches and emotions.

Since his title in Hamburg, Buse has clearly slowed down and lost speed. He’s only won two matches in a row once since that title, and even then it was pretty laboured. Most of the matches I see him play are very average, and I mainly get the feeling that he’s physically exhausted. Whether it was in Kitzbühel against Echeverry or even in Montreal against Norrie, he seemed to have no energy left. You might think he’s had time to recover with about ten days off, but for me it’s more of a general fatigue than something tied to one or two specific matches. He’s feeling the effects of several intense weeks at the start of the year where he put in a lot, and his game relies almost entirely on his physical condition, because he’s someone who returns from far behind the baseline, doesn’t have great serving quality, but fights mentally and physically to stay close to his opponents and try to make them fall apart as much as possible. He needs his legs to be at his best and, clearly, right now that’s not the case. He even took a medical timeout for a hip problem against Norrie. In short, with all these question marks around his physical condition, I’m already putting up a big warning sign.

It’s not a particularly easy first round ahead of him either, because even if Walton is sometimes labelled as a good server, he’s still a solid baseliner who doesn’t do much but is hard to beat when he’s dialed in, which seems to be the case lately. I watched his first-round win against Mejia. It wasn’t an incredible match, but his opponent was confident. And as soon as Walton saw that Mejia was physically exhausted, he just turned into a wall and never gave him another free point. I think we could see the same scenario here if the Australian quickly picked up on signs of shakiness from Buse.

The issue is that Walton is at 1.64, which is just too low for me, given that he doesn’t like Buse’s profile, who will get enough returns in play and be even more solid than him from the baseline. Walton has a poor record against solid baseliners, except for Medvedev, whom he’s beaten twice, which boosts his stats. Aside from those wins, it’s pretty grim. I think a fit Buse has exactly the kind of game to unsettle him, and his odds would be very appealing, but with this doubt, it makes sense…