Yes ladies and gentlemen, I said it!

Botic is going to win the US Open. Obviously, I’m joking, but the Dutchman could have a huge opportunity in this quite open section of the draw, and since he would come up against a Zverev who, for now, really isn’t convincing at all... but we’re not there yet.

A perfect match from Van De Zandschulp against De Minaur. The Dutchman put in some great preparation for this tournament and often plays well in New York too. You can feel that he particularly likes the conditions here and that he’s confident. I even felt his attitude was unusually cheerful, which is a bit of an anomaly. But basically, all those little flaws we usually know him for, the ones that tend to spoil his great tennis level, are not visible at the moment at the start of this tournament. His serve is dialed in, he’s limiting double faults and, from the baseline, he constructs his points perfectly before finishing them off the right way. Even in the tense moments, when he usually tightens up and can’t close out, he’s showing tremendous solidity. In short, this is Prime Van De Zandschulp.

If the Dutchman kept up this level of play all year, he’d be in the top 10 without any problem. The issue is that he doesn’t, and we clearly saw that in the warm-up events despite the good level. He loses to Fonseca while doing anything and everything on serve, and in Winston-Salem he plays a really bad match against Bonzi. You’re never completely safe from a poor match by Van De Zandschulp, but the current trend is still very positive and makes you want to trust him.

On Bergs’ side, it’s pretty much the opposite, with a Belgian who really doesn’t inspire confidence and shows shakiness in almost every aspect. I can excuse his scrappy first-round match against Taberner, who’s coming back from injury and played over two days, but his match against De Jong still wasn’t good. He really got through because the Dutchman collapsed on serve. I can still acknowledge that Bergs’ attitude is relatively good. He knows he’s not playing his best tennis, and he’s accepting it more than usual. He’s fighting mentally to try to turn it around. But the result is that he has already spent a lot of energy at the start of this tournament, and for now we don’t really see the light at the end of the tunnel for him.

This will be the first meeting between these two players, and I can’t help but think that the match-up suits Van De Zandschulp, who has this very interesting mix of defence and attack, but also and above all the physical freshness, compared to a Zizou who’s playing poorly and is already quite tired. I don’t see many surprises in this match, but once again with VDZ, you never know.