The Powerful Samurai

Sakamoto is serving bombs...

Yes, I'll admit it. Rei is growing on me; quite a fun player to watch - especially when he wins and does the Samurai celebration. He blasted his way through qualifying and finished with 38 aces against Vukic in his first round! I had high hopes for him in his first round against Vukic. How do I feel about it now? A bit mixed, even though it's still positive. The Australian was quite solid on serve himself, but I also want to attribute it to Sakamoto not being that efficient on return. In short, a bit of a servebot in that match. His rally tolerance is also quite limited, although not as much as the real servebots. It's basically big serve, big returns, and big groundstrokes... go big or go home. That's the kind of player that Tiafoe just faced in his first round - Martin Damm. Also, that's the kind of player that we know Frances does not like to face - even if he has gotten better at handling it. Frances wants to be in control of the rallies against less powerful opponents; he excels at point construction due to the quality of his groundstrokes combined with his movement, net game, and variety. When he is good, he is really good; he has a lot of tools.

It was always going to be a bit of a tricky first match for Tiafoe, coming into the USO with big expectations after that Cincinnati run (just look at what happened to Fils). Anyway, he managed to get through it in the end, even if it was not easy. Also, he got a lot of practice facing a big hitter; he's well-prepared for Sakamoto. In a way, this upcoming match reminds me slightly of Tiafoe's battles against Watanuki... another Japanese player with a big serve who plays fearless and aggressive tennis. He faced him three times and did not have an easy match out of those three, despite being the higher-ranked player. We don't know the scheduling yet, but Tiafoe tends to get the main stadiums in the night session. Based on what I've seen from Sakamoto, he tends to handle the big moments quite well, so I don't think he will mind the electric atmosphere...