Masters 500 Vienna

[don_budge]

Sonego takes out Evans in 2. His forehand was a real weapon/problem for Evans.

I didn't see much of the match but from what I did see it looked to me as if Sonego was roughing Evans up pretty good with his serve and that can be a problem for a player with Daniel Evans relative pluses and minuses. If he puts Evans on the defensive from the serve then it becomes an uphill battle for Evans. It didn't look to me that Dimitrov served particularly well for the entirety of their match. Evans was creeping in on the second serve and making interesting tactical inroads from there.

But one very interesting aspect of the Sonego/Evans match that I wasn't aware of was highlighted in a video on the ATP website. It was extremely thoughtful and extremely effective for a number of reasons for Sonego. It appears that in the course of the cross court game that Evans is trying to get Sonego to play Sonego plays a soft drop shot on a reverse cross court forehand. So effective for a number of reasons. When Evans is playing the low slice cross court the likely response is some kind of effort deep into his backhand or something designed to force him out of position to his forehand. But to come up with the tactic of playing a short ball to force Evans forwards when he is anticipating something deep is brilliantly wicked.

https://www.atptour.com/en/video/video-search-results/hot-shots-the-unplayable-tactic-that-earned-sonego-a-vienna-final-spot

The short reply totally disrupts the tactic Evans is trying to establish. Kudos to Sonego and his team for thinking this through beforehand and giving him something concrete to reply to the difficult proposition Evans is asking with his slicing tactics. Drop shotting off of a low underspin shot is a good percentage reply taking into all of the details into consideration. A clever counter tactic. It makes more sense percentage wise than trying to drill the forehand deep into the Evans forehand or even the backhand. It is the perfect reply if it is executed...perfectly.

[stroke]

Yes, the Sonego forehand dropper was a real problem for Evans. It appears Rublev, who reminds me of Agassi with his refusing to back up/hugging the baseline style, has taken that drop shot off the table.