Good draw for Mattia!

My little Mattia got taken advantage of in Winston-Salem by a not-so-sharp Darderi in their first set, then extremely good because he made very few errors. And in the next match, he loses 1 and 1 because of his knee injury. Well… It was up to Mattia to do better!

Piros held firm, though, against an injured O'Connell in the final round of US Open qualifying. What a relief, and what a success for the clay-loving Hungarian. He had already qualified last year, by the way. He’s confirming his status as a guy on the verge of the top 100.

On the other hand, it’s hard to see him doing much here. Mattia is a hard-court player, and he’s a lefty. Piros loves to run around his forehand, and mentally, we’ve seen he can be pretty fragile. So I’m not going to stick around long here…