First time?!

Not a single official ATP match, yet those two have known each other since they were kids.

How can we not talk about Safiullin’s perfect match today? The Russian reached a performance level of 9.5, which is just plain perfect and something only a few players have hit this season in a single match. I feel bad for Bu, who couldn’t do anything and had to endure Safiullin’s bursts of acceleration the whole match without finding any answers. No sign of injury for Safiu either, even though he seemed quite bothered at the end of the match against Halys, so I have to say he surprised me, but I’m wary: he could also completely not show up tomorrow and take an MTO in the second set, for example. But if he plays at the same level as today, he can destroy even a guy like Medvedev.

Daniil just scraped through against Wong and I liked his performance less compared with the first round; I didn’t see a great Medvedev, but it wasn’t a disaster either. I’m curious to see how he’ll handle his match against Safiullin, but a good Daniil is supposed to punish him with his baseline stability and the fact that Safiu doesn’t mix it up and plays everything in rhythm. I’m being cautious with this match because both players are capable of the best and the worst, and the fact that they’ve known each other since they were kids (and we don’t really know who prefers playing whom) leaves a good amount of uncertainty.