Tennis Prediction Aleksandar Vukic vs Lorenzo Musetti: Washington

Washington 🇺🇸

• When a player comes back from a long break, what takes the most time to come back is not the physical condition nor the serve, it's the timing on the return. Sending a flat first ball is a matter of reading and habit, and it's not something you can recover in practice.

• Lorenzo Musetti is exactly in this case. The thigh injury in Rome cost him Roland-Garros and then Wimbledon, and before showing up here he hadn't played a single hard court match since March. His first round gave him 10 games before his opponent retired.

• 10 games where he clearly dominated his opponent from A to Z but often the hardest part is not the comeback match, it's the follow-up.

• He's facing the most unpleasant profile possible for a 'comeback'. Aleksandar Vukic serves flat, and he's going through the best period of his recent career: not a single loss since July 8th, 8 wins in a row, 5 in Granby and 3 here counting the qualies.

• What it gives in the start of the match is a scoreboard that refuses to move. The Australian holds because we don't read his serve right away, the Italian holds because he's vastly the better player of the two and it's not in the return games that his opponent wins his matches. No one takes anything, and the games add up.

• They crossed paths once, in Pune early 2022, on hard. The first set went to a tiebreak, 13 games, and Vukic took the next one. The balance of power is completely different, but this match says one thing that hasn't changed: it takes time to get into this serve.

• I don't hide what's bothering me. Musetti bageled in his very first comeback set, and a number like that forbids painting him as a convalescent. Except he bageled against a rhythm player without weapons to hurt, who retired shortly after.

• I see a tight start, Vukic well in his service games, and Musetti forced to find his answers later than he'd like.