Cerundolo is back!

All it took was a huge battle against Struff...

For a while, there were many reports that Cerundolo was unhappy and tired of tennis. It also kind of showed in his results during the lead-up tournaments to the USO. He was lucky enough to get Misolic in the first round and then showed some really good fight against a dangerous Struff. We saw a huge reaction from him after that win, and there was a sense that he would be able to play with nothing to lose. Still, it was going to be tough against an in-form Fritz. Dolo wasn't really playing that well in the first two sets, but managed to do an incredible comeback, winning the last three sets and thus the match. What made it possible was his ability to really dictate with his forehand... exploiting one of Fritz's weaknesses, which is his movement. He kept hitting side-to-side with a good margin, never giving the American a chance to recover to neutral! Apart from that, he was clutch, hitting three big serves while being 0-40 down in the deciding set.

An inspired Blockx got his revenge against Cobolli. He lost the first set tiebreaker, but after a bit of a battle at the start of the second set, he took over the match completely. You could tell that the Belgian was really fired up for that match, and Cobolli became very flat; his game really doesn't work without energy.

This matchup shares some similarities to the one Cerundolo just had against Fritz. He'll be facing another big server who is strong from the baseline. Blockx is less aggressive than Fritz; he can stick around in longer rallies without having to dictate as often. I would say that he is also a slightly better mover than Fritz. Still, he needs to be careful not to play this too passively, since he will also struggle to turn rallies around if Cerundolo gets to take control with his forehand too often. One of the questions that needs to be asked is how repeatable that kind of performance from the Argentine is. To be fair, he wasn't hitting crazy winners all the time... he could play with some margin; it was still enough. Blockx needs to take advantage of his serve and his ability to finish points at the net...