Straight out of Cancun!

A good week for the Pole in Mexico...

Well, it might have been a Challenger, but at least Hubert gets to win a title and boost his confidence a bit; it's been quite a long struggle with injuries. We have already seen him play at a good level for a while now; now it's more about finding consistency and perhaps that extra gear so that he can challenge the actual top players, the way he used to, at least to a certain degree. Hurkacz has struggled in the past at the US Open; he has never even passed the second round, being upset over and over as a rather large favorite. We know that he tends to underperform in Grand Slams in general, but those are quite damning stats.

Well, at least he seems to have been quite fortunate with his draw, at least at first glance. Dzumhur is mainly known as a pest on the Challenger tour, although he has been making a lot of progress in the last year or so, to be able to show up a lot more on the main ATP tour. Despite his lack of power, he has several other attributes that make him a pain to play... especially if he starts frustrating you with his "tactical" stuff ;) Similarly to Bublik, he had a fantastic 2025, and it was always going to be an incredibly hard ask for him to defend all these points. That has been the theme throughout the entire year, even if we saw a bit of an epic run in Umag. Since then, he's played just a few small matches, mainly at CH level, and he did withdraw out of the Cancun Challenger with a back issue. While it makes sense to prioritize a Grand Slam, that still leaves us with some question marks... if we are going to see full effort from him here. His game is very much based on his speed and ability to put endless balls back on the other side, so if he is unable to do that, he doesn't really have much else. Besides that, Hurkacz has quite a high rally tolerance himself and doesn't mind coming to the net to finish points, which is always a good thing against Dzumhur, even if he is very crafty with his lobs and passing shots...