Fearnley, the comeback kid

The Brit is LL and just pulled off an incredible comeback against Landaluce. He REALLY has nothing to lose.

Rather a good level of play from the Brit, even if he were to lose his match against the Spaniard in the first round. The content was pretty cool, but it’s too often weighed down by his weakness on the second serve. He finished the match with 16 double faults, and you can feel that on every second serve, he might crack. That’s an issue, but he makes up for it with great baseline play and solid, well-structured tennis. He’s a great player who’s in decent form, and given how his tournament started, he’ll be able to play super relaxed. He says he managed to make his comeback because he’d already done it against another player recently in Newport, and once he did that he started to believe again, so we’ll have to watch out for another potential comeback if he finds himself behind. In any case, a good win!

A good win, but against an erratic Landaluce who finished the match with over sixty unforced errors and collapsed in the last set. The Spaniard played tennis that was too aggressive and allowed Fearnley to counter and get his own game going. It’s a different story against Etcheverry because the Argentinian is much more measured in his playing style. He keeps errors to a minimum and attacks over the long run. He makes his opponents move and wears them down. We suspected he might be finding some form again for this tournament, and that seems to be the case. He won fairly comfortably against Kopriva in a good-quality match. I found him very precise, especially on serve, and physically solid because the rallies were long and I never felt he was affected, even though the match was short.

First meeting between these two players. Fearnley has to be seen as a dangerous outsider because he has nothing to lose, and that’s often an advantage when you can play very relaxed. In terms of the match-up, it’s not that straightforward for him, because he’s going to have to dictate the play and limit errors against a guy who looks ready to hold his diagonals for 4 hours...