Jacquet on the attack!

The Frenchman won a Challenger title right here in China last year, which could give him ideas about confirming his form on the main tour.

I was convinced that Jacquet was a regular on the Asian tours, but it turns out that last year was really his only experience. It went pretty well and he played very well. This season, he’s coming in with just a little less form, but with a level of play that’s convincing most of the time. You can feel he’s not far from taking an important step forward, but he still badly lacks consistency. He’s capable of playing great matches, then doing absolutely anything with no plan B at all. With him, it’s kind of all or nothing.

Vukic is sort of the opposite. The Australian is super consistent in what he brings from one match to another. It’s rare to see him completely collapse or toss a match away. He’s more of an average player but he maintains that level as much as possible. For once, he always plays well during the Asian swings and he particularly enjoys the fast conditions as well as the atmosphere around this tour. It’s almost systematic, but he often manages to raise his level of play and get a bit of his form back when his season isn’t going as planned. I’m not going to say I found him excellent in his last matches, but it wasn’t completely awful either. He played like Vukic. He and Jacquet played a few weeks ago in Quebec and the Australian won 7–6 6–1. I didn’t see the match, but the score suggests that once he fell behind, Jacquet completely imploded. That’s what worries me a bit in this match.

In my eyes, the Frenchman’s maximum level of play is higher than Vukic’s, but he doesn’t manage to sustain it enough, and his lows are lower than the Australian’s. In terms of experience and management, Vukic is clearly ahead. He may not be the better player strictly speaking, but he’s the one who gives me the most guarantees in this matchup. With his serve quality and his simple patterns of play, you know what to expect.