"Cream of the Crop" Beanalysis: Toronto Round Two
Well hello again good reader, I’m glad you came back after whatever happened in round one, my statements seemed like they misled you, but I assure you they did not, I just mis-speculated, if that’s even a word. Either way, with more statistics and video to work with in round two, the writeups should become a lot more reliable and less speculatory. So without further ado, here is your Beanalysis!
Alcaraz v. Shelton
Ah hello Carlitos! Good to see tennis has been treating you well since the unfortunate injury earlier this year. A couple Masters titles and a Slam title, along with others sprinkled in there, that’s a pretty darn good year if I do say so myself. That’s gotta put him as the easy favorite to win this whole tournament, but it starts with round one, which he is still the favorite for. The thing with Carlos is that he can beat most people with sheer power and skill, no mental work required, and this is probably one of those matches. Carlos is on a winning streak of quite a lot, and I wouldn’t expect it to end in a round one match.
Ben Shelton crashed the party around this time last year, going deep in Atlanta and then pulling a huge upset on Casper Ruud, who was doing quite well at the time, so overall he’s been impressive. I didn’t write on Shelton’s first round matchup, but I do have the stats and some video to help me see exactly how he’s doing so far. Well, he made the quarterfinals at AO, but really not much else. I think this isn’t a good sign for him, especially because his opponent is literally the best in the world. Shelton did well in his first round match, but it really doesn’t look good enough for him to beat Alcaraz. I’m sorry Shelton enthusiasts, but Alcaraz in two.
Kecmanovic v. Hurkacz
Well would you look at that, it’s my tennis lookalike! Good to see you Kecmanovic, but kinda sad to see you aren’t doing too great on tour. Maybe that can change this week though. Then again maybe not. Hurkacz is the opponent, and considering that Kec looked kinda bad in round one, dropping a set to Garin, who isn’t that good of an opponent. Something I noticed was that Kecmanovic gave a lot of break point opportunities, most of which Garin couldn’t capitalize on, only winning four breaks out of 17 chances. Luckily Kecmanovic did a lot better at utilizing break point opportunities, still only winning four, but out of fewer chances. I think these poor serve games will come back to haunt Kecmanovic because I do know that Hubi can easily capitalize on them.
Hubert had a much more pleasant victory in round one, winning in two simple sets against Bublik. The stats show a simple “winning more points and having a better serve” type of match, where Hurkacz just easily won. I think this might be another one of those matches for Hubi, Kecmanovic just looks like he’s making too many mistakes for him to not blow him out of the water. This is probably another easy 2 set win for Hurkacz.
Paul vs. Cerundolo
Let’s go TP! I was scared he wasn’t gonna win that match for a bit there. Paul really excelled at return, which made up for some poor serving throughout the match. He won a staggering 32% of his first serve return points, and 46% of the second serve return points. Another thing was that Schwartzman still didn’t win a lot of return points, even with poor serving at times from Paul. While this is bad news for Schwartzman and fans, this was great for Paul and Co, who looks to continue the mass destinations of Argentinian players as he goes up against Cerundolo today.
Cerundolo has been having the time of his life on tour right now, making his runs deep and his opponents weep, especially all those higher ranked peeps. (That was a taste of my incredible rapping skill, my first album comes out when Zverev wins a Grand Slam) but he’s been on a tear this year, even netting a title or two. His play yesterday against Wild Card Galarneau gave me very mixed signals, he played worse according to the statistics, but he managed to go clutch on the important (break) points. I’m thinking that this may not work out well in round two for Dolo, as Paul can outplay him to the point where even if he’s clutch, he can’t win all of them, and eventually Paul can beat him. That’s how this match is looking as of right now, but giving Dolo the benefit of the doubt and just calling it a bad day, I would still say that Paul has a bit of an edge, though it would be close. Regardless I would probably say three sets and the win goes to Tommy Paul.
Giron v. Rune
Giron has been struggling all season to get that big breakthrough push to rocket on tour and stay there… the problem is that he keeps getting bad draws, and he can’t beat the top 8 seeds all the time in every tournament. Looking at his round one match stats it is impossible to see why he won, there is literally not a single stat that he was better in, meaning the win was probably just some luck or something, I mean I’m not even joking! Look it up yourself, he had worse of every stat in that match, it’s ridiculous. What this means to me is that there is no way he wins playing like that against the 5 seed Rune.
Speaking of, how’s it been hanging Rune? Pretty good it looks like, although I will say he doesn’t have the best results on the hard courts. Rune doesn’t have a first round match to analyze, but really there isn’t much needed looking at Giron’s results, he looks like he’s good to go, and ready to blow through Marcos to get to the 3rd round. I don’t really have much else to say, so how about a joke? What’s the difference between a poorly dressed man on a unicycle, and a well dressed man on a bicycle? I’ll tell you if Rune wins. Which I think he will, in two sets at that.
Tsitsipas v. Monfils
The Greek toilet man is back guys! Aren’t you so excited??? I know I am. Tsitsipas has been doing well recently, winning Los Cabos for his 10th ATP title last week, and putting up good results at some other tournaments, and not really losing to anyone worse than him. Looking simply at his previous tournament play, because I don’t have a first round match to analyze for him, he looks in prime position to make a run for back to back titles this week, and then be pretty much ready to go for the USO and maybe not have a toilet scandal along the way. I’m confident in Tsitsipas, and as much as I’m not a fan of him as a person, I’ve gotta respect talent, and he has no shortage of that.
Monfils, on the other hand, does have a round one match for me to analyze and pick apart statistics on. He had a very competitive first two sets, and then really locked things down and won the third set easily. This is what I expected to happen, and I’m glad the hiatus from the tour didn’t basically end Monfils’ career prematurely. Looking into the stats from the first round match between Monf and Eubanks, you can see a trend of Monfils just winning more points overall, even with the worse first serve percentage of the two, and you can also see that he did quite well on the return games as well, which can be easily seen via the third set scoreline of 6-1, meaning a lot of breaks. I think Monfils is in a good position to do something at some smaller tournaments, or maybe a bigger one with a lucky draw, but I’m not really seeing him upset Tsitsipas just like that, although it is possible. Something I can see though is Monfils making this one a tough and entertaining match for Tsitsipas and the fans, respectively. But in reality Tsitsipas has the edge here and I think about the same scoreline but reversed for Monfils is in store, two tight sets, one for each, and then a third set blowout for Tsitsipas.
Berrettini vs. Sinner
Angry Italian yelling in the background Well here we are in the battle of “who do the Italian fans in Canada love more, the superstar ‘why aren’t you modeling for some magazine’ player, or the superstar ‘not Irish’ redhead?” Well I’ll tell you my opinion, and It’s gotta be Jannik Sinner, simply because Berrettini on anything but grass courts is a mediocre player, and Sinner is good most everywhere. But looking at Berrettini’s first match, the crazy stat of only losing nine service points the entire match pops out immediately. That combined with some good return games put him leagues above Barrere, and let him coast to an easy win. I don’t know if that will be the same in this match, because Sinner is a much better player than Barrere, but it’s still something to look out for in this match. If he can get a couple breaks here and there this match may not be as cut and dry as it seems. In fact one might even call it “shredded and moist”, ok sorry that was disgusting, I’ll refrain from saying that ever again. Anyway, there might just be something here for Berrettini, and it might be just what he needed to get back to his old top 10 self.
On the topic of Sinner, he has been pretty good this year, and he even upset Alcaraz at a Masters earlier this year in Miami, I’m really hoping Sinner can win one of those soon, (he should have won Miami 2021, fight me) and hey, maybe soon can be in three business days and two not business days. I think it’s entirely possible, but the only thing in his way is Tsitsipas and Alcaraz, both of whom he’s beaten in the past on hard courts. I’m thinking if he really gets into gear, especially using his easier second and third round matchups to play into great form, he can make a run at it. Of course beating Tsitsipas and Alcaraz back to back is going to be challenging, I just think it’s possible that he can do it. Going up against Berrettini this early is going to be annoying for anyone, but I do think Sinner is up for the challenge and can probably do it. I’m thinking Sinner in 3, because Berrettini might be able to catch him sleeping and nab a tiebreak in the first set.
Zverev vs. ADF
Weirdly enough, but this might just be the toughest round for Zverev until he faces Alcaraz. I think ADF is the equivalent of an Eephus pitch in baseball, so wacky that it catches people off guard and randomly wins. Zverev seems like the type of guy that’s prepared for that kind of thing though, but the stats will probably tell all for these two. Zverev’s stats look like that of a servebot, not losing a single service game, and having a whopping 74% first serve percentage, and winning 77% of his service points throughout the match. Griekspoor can’t say the same (he can’t put himself in there.) (Props to anyone who gets that joke) Anyway, it seemed to be a blowout in disguise for Zverev, and he probably is going to do something similar today against ADF.
Speaking of, ADF had some great stats as well, completely blowing up Wolf’s poor attempts at serving. That means that this match is going to have a great return player going up against a great server, which should make for some fun games. I think ADF has the ability to maybe pull something from behind Zverev’s ear and make something with it, but I’m not 100% convinced, especially with how good Zverev’s stats looked yesterday, and also the fact that I think Zverev is just in general the better player. I have been wrong in the past couple days about ADF though, and it really wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if I’m wrong again, but I’m thinking that this one has to go to Zverev, maybe 3 sets if ADF is really on top of it today.
Diallo v. ADM
Wait… Who beat Dan Evans?? A Taco Bell sauce??? Oh Diallo. WHO THE HECK IS THAT? That’s probably an interaction someone had about this guy, because has he ever played tennis before? Oh he’s just been stuck in qualifiers and challengers for a while now. Still, that doesn’t help explain how he beat the guy who just had a dream run to a 500 title last week. But I guess it happened, and now we just have to roll with it. So it looks to me like Dan Evans’ serve just fell apart a couple times, and it was just at the worst possible ones. Makes sense, that happens sometimes. He also had fewer winners, which might be part of it. Mostly to me though it just seems like a fluke. And that’ll for sure be tested today because ADM is fresh off of a win against Cam Norrie and a Los Cabos finals run, so it’ll be a tough one for Diallo, but we’ll see.
So ADM had a classic match win when looking at the statistics, he came through when it counted, jumped on second serves from Norrie and won enough points to grab the win, pretty textbook if you ask me, his second round is very much going to be nicer for him because it’s some dude nobody has ever heard of, and the win he got over Evans seemed to be a somewhat fluke. I think ADM has everything in his arsenal to throw at Diallo, and eventually something will work, and there may not be enough time for Diallo to adapt. This is pretty clear cut to me, it really only reads ADM in 2, probably a blowout. But I hope this Diallo guy can get a more favorable draw in the future.