Kamil Majchrzak Prediction: Washington

Washington 🇺🇸

• Last night, Kamil Majchrzak eliminated Tommy Paul in two sets, and what interests me in this match is not the final score. It's the number of times he found himself in a position to break the opponent's serve. More than ten break points in a single match, against a player ranked in the top 20.

• It doesn't show in a ranking. The Pole is 72nd, but he's a complete player, as clean behind his serve as on the return, and it's these profiles that turn a match into a fight rather than a formality.

• Taylor Fritz, on the other hand, got through comfortably against Zizou Bergs, except that he still had to fend off four break points along the way. On a player who serves like him, that's not an alarm signal. It's simply proof that his serve is in play, and it will be in play again tonight.

• I'm not going to pretend: the hard court is not the surface on which the Pole has built his season. His title in 's-Hertogenbosch, his wins over Daniil Medvedev, Felix Auger-Aliassime and Alex De Minaur, all that happened on grass, and his record on hard courts is balanced. Yesterday's scalp was his first real blow of the year on hard.

• That's exactly why I'm not going to back him to win. What I'm buying here is not the exploit, it's the format of the match: two players who protect their serve well enough for the sets to stretch, and a returner clean enough to take games off the American.

• Fritz remains the boss of this match and I see him prevailing. I especially see him doing it in three sets.