A Botic who’s still capable of surprising us.

The Dutchman is a master at doing exactly what you don’t expect from him.

It's been pretty good stuff from Van De Zandschulp at the start of this US swing after completely falling apart during the post-Wimbledon period. The Dutchman has won some very good matches and has gone out with honor each time. He's really strong in this underdog role against players who can give him rhythm and pace. However, he remains extremely inconsistent, especially on serve, where he can produce disastrous matches while always looking mentally worrying. What I mean is that we've seen a good VDZ lately, but the context was different. Now he's back in a smaller tournament against a player who's much less sharp and exciting than the guys he faced recently. That makes it even more dangerous for him.

Especially since Vallejo is playing very well and is adapting better and better to hard courts, with much more aggressiveness and tempo than usual. He had an excellent tournament in Cincinnati, winning two matches and, in my opinion, deserving the win against Paul before tightening up and letting the lead slip away from him twice. He's a player who doesn’t know how to handle the ends of sets or pressure moments, but the rest of his game is really good, especially right now. I also watched his first round against Carreño, and don’t be fooled by the fact the Spaniard retired, because he was physically fine for 90% of the match, if not more. Maybe it bothered him on a few sprints, but what I mean is that we were watching a real match before the retirement, and Vallejo really impressed me. He was playing with a lot of aggression and volume whenever he could. He’s trading in his usual clay-grinder style for a much more direct and aggressive game that works well on these hard courts. He did once again have a small issue at the end of the first set closing it out cleanly, but the rest of his match was very solid.

They’ve already played once this season in Bastad and I didn’t see the match. However, looking at the stats, it seemed pretty one-sided in Vallejo’s favor, as he created a good number of chances on the opponent’s serve. Maybe on hard courts he’ll have more trouble getting breaks, but as I said, VDZ has issues on his second serve and could also hand him a few opportunities on his own. In terms of momentum, I think Vallejo is playing extremely well, and you can rarely trust VDZ in a first round, because every tournament is different for him. He’s also back in the role of favorite, which doesn’t really suit his profile.