Programming delay

With these two Argentinians ready to play for hours, they might slightly delay today's schedule on their courts.

J. M. Cerundolo beat Suresh in the first round. It wasn’t an easy match because the Indian’s profile can cause big problems. But Cerundolo is pretty good in that role of disrupting and exposing erratic players. The Argentine still had to go through a tiebreak in the first set and save a set point. After that, he finished things off quite cleanly, but he gives me more or less the same impression as in recent weeks, namely that he’s no longer playing his best tennis. He hangs in there and fights well, which allows him to grind out a few wins here and there, but in particular there’s a drop in his serve, which was excellent just a few weeks ago. And from the baseline, he has to work even harder, which basically isn’t an issue for him, but there too I find him a bit less effective. I wouldn’t go so far as to interpret everything I’m saying in that way, but maybe he’s also starting to feel this part of the season is getting pretty long, like his brother.

It’s not really the same dynamic for Baez, who has been in good form for a few weeks and really seems to be gaining momentum. The Argentine is coming off a lost final in Cancun against Hurkacz, which is still a very good result. There was a bit of concern about that first round yesterday against Grenier, because the Frenchman is also a bit of a tricky opponent, and there was the whole issue of how Baez would handle the back-to-back schedule. In the end, he got through in straight sets; the match was far from perfect, but I’d say that’s not exactly surprising. Physically, he didn’t expend that much energy last week, and now that he’s got his tournament underway, I’m expecting much better matches from him, especially since this is a tournament where he’s always done well and where he’s already won a title. In terms of both motivation and level of play, I currently rate him above Cerundolo.

Their head-to-head record favors Baez, who leads by a fair margin, but the matches date back several years to when Baez was clearly above Cerundolo. Cerundolo has progressed a lot since then and should now be closer to him and, let’s say, able to pose new problems. In any case, I don’t want to lean too heavily on that, and if I have to treat this match as a new encounter with no history, I’d say that Cerundolo’s strength in disrupting aggressive, high-risk players will be a bit less effective against a Baez who likes to battle from the baseline and doesn’t make many errors.