In Search of Happiness

These two players are not playing anywhere near their best tennis at the moment, but we can count on their temperament to push them to fight, or not.

After their win in the first round, Bergs and De Jong insisted they really weren’t playing their best tennis. But I find their view quite realistic. Bergs says that his attitude and focus will get the job done while he waits for his level of play to come back. It’s true that with a good attitude and without doubting yourself, you often manage to get through, even if it’s tough. And as if by magic, the tennis comes back. It’s a bit different for De Jong, who doesn’t have an exceptional attitude. I find him super frustrated and tense, but you have to give him credit for a nice little comeback in the first round, which shows that he does still believe.

Bergs is the favorite in this match for several reasons. First, his level of play is still higher than De Jong’s at the moment. He’s also naturally better on this surface, with a lot more ability to do damage. I also think we can put him in the category of players who know how to raise their game in big tournaments. It’s not obvious for now, but I’m not writing him off completely. The Belgian will have to manage his match with a good deal of focus, but he should normally come out on top. In his first-round match, he lost a set but didn’t panic and recovered well against a rather surprising opponent who didn’t make things easy for him. It was a little trap for the Belgian, but he got through this first test and seems to be on a good track.

De Jong took advantage of the rain delay to mount a little comeback when he was down two sets to one. And his opponent completely collapsed when they resumed, while De Jong was transformed. The Belgian had done anything and everything on his service games in the first part of the match, with more than ten double faults and a lack of sharpness even though he’d had quite a few chances. But when they came back, I saw the best version of De Jong. He served well, counterattacked well, he’s fairly intelligent. But you can tell it’s still too streaky and that hard courts aren’t really ideal for him.