Un affrontement difficile
Shevchenko est à 0-5 contre Hurkacz...
Well, do you think this will be "lucky number six" for Shevchenko? It's an uphill battle for sure, especially considering that the majority of the matches have been straight-up dominant wins for Hurkacz. Besides that, Shevchenko's form is not exactly great... he didn't really achieve much at all during the summer hardcourt swing. Then, he had to battle very hard in the Davis Cup in Kazakhstan against his Thai opponents. A very tight win in his first match as a 1.13~ favorite and then a loss as a 1.33 favorite, not exactly a great confidence boost. Not only that, Shevchenko is actually defending a semifinal here in Chengdu. His ranking is starting to head in the wrong direction, and it will get a lot worse if he loses more points by getting eliminated in the first round here. It will be interesting to see what kind of version we get of Shevchenko here... Will he come out a bit nervous and shaky due to his poor form and the pressure on him? Or perhaps he can go into this and play some "YOLO-ball", just swinging freely; he knows he is a big underdog here. Will the two Davis Cup matches help him, perhaps? No good results, but at least he got to play a bit, and the travel is not THAT bad.
As for Hurkacz, he is starting to get stronger again. He's not quite at his peak level yet, but he is starting to become a bit more consistent, and I really liked his last match against Shelton at the US Open. This is a very comfortable matchup for him as well; he does pretty much everything better than Shevchenko. I tend to like Shevchenko against players who are not good movers, especially laterally, but this is not the case with Hurkacz... he is also someone who is very solid from the baseline, whereas Shevchenko prefers to face more erratic players. At least the altitude and court speed will perhaps give Shevchenko a bit of an easier time to get some holds on his own, perhaps able to sneak into a tiebreak?
