The survivors

Among the players who took part in the Davis Cup followed by the Laver Cup, very few managed to handle the back-to-back events well, and Cerundolo and Mensik are among them.

I had major doubts about Cerundolo’s motivation and potentially his form, but he was good and in a good mood for his opening match. Great fighting spirit too to turn the match around against VDZ, who was actually playing very well. And I can think of a bunch of matches where Cerundolo would have simply thrown in the towel from the second set onwards, in full “don’t care anymore, don’t feel like fighting” mode. I think the Davis Cup at home in Argentina did him a lot of good, because he was recently complaining about being sick of the long US swing. Then with the good vibes and hype around the Laver Cup afterwards, maybe he recharged his mental batteries to finish the season well. In any case, his first round pretty much convinced me. And he’s probably ready to back it up.

It’s also a pretty good takeaway regarding Mensik in the first round against Bublik. Even if the Czech once again had a bit of a dip in the second set and scared himself. He served well and managed to be clutch at the end of the match. But once again, he’s showing that putting together a complete match is hard for him. And I’d put him in the category of players to keep an eye on in the coming weeks, because I’m convinced that the grind is bound to catch up with him. On the other hand, in pure tennis terms, I really liked what he produced.

In terms of head-to-head, Cerundolo leads 2–0 and I understand why. First, the Argentine is an excellent returner. He concedes very few aces, returns from far back, and can sort of nullify that advantage. We saw that in particular against Fritz at the US Open. And when you reduce the impact of Mensik’s serve, he immediately becomes a lot less dangerous. From the baseline, there’s a big gap on the forehand side, with Cerundolo being extremely good there, unlike Mensik. However, the Czech has the edge on the backhand side. If his game doesn’t rely as much on serve quality, then Mensik is immediately more limited and in trouble. We’ll have to see whether he manages to scrape points or if he once again gets returned too effectively.