We meet again!

Well, look... another match between Ruud and JMC!

JMC was able to grind down Ruud twice in Gstaad, but their last meeting in Montreal was an absolute masterclass from Ruud. Quite frankly, he was tired of losing to Juanma and came in with a tactic that he executed flawlessly. What was it? Hyper-aggression. He served great, returned with intention, and came to the net. I was even chuckling a bit during that match, because we saw Ruud standing to return inside the baseline, with jumping BH return winners... that's not your style at all; you are supposed to be all the way back, right next to Medvedev! So yes, it worked flawlessly and caught JMC a bit by surprise, who barely had any time to react before the match was over. Now, let's not let ourselves fall completely for recency bias... just because it happened once does not mean it WILL happen that way again... at least not that perfectly ;)

I'll tell you one big reason why it might be a lot harder. Ruud had to cut one of his training sessions against Etcheverry short, reportedly not being able to serve and barely able to hit groundstrokes. We always have to be wary of this kind of news, but that is truly alarming. More than anything, JMC is an awful opponent to face when you are not feeling well... just ask Jannik Sinner ;) Seriously, I do find him great at locking in and taking care of business in these kinds of moments... a lot of other players would have choked it. Let's not forget his absolutely epic match against Rinderknech... Juanma is tough! As for his recent form, I find it decent but not amazing. At least we got two wins in Winston-Salem before he ran into a good Buse in the QF...