Alcaraz Overpowers Paul & More US Open Results | Monday Match Analysis

0:00Welcome everyone to Monday Match Analysis brought to you by FitNexa. I'm Gil Gross, US Open 2026 recording this on Monday at 12.08am. Just past midnight so it just became Monday. We are midway through the fourth round which means half of the quarter finalists have already been determined but I thought it was a good time to do a show, talk about some matches especially because today I was court side for the Carlos Alcarez Tommy Paul match so I got to watch every point of that match from a very cool manage point. I'll also go through some other results but let's start with Carlos. It's the first time that I'm really covering his tennis in this tournament. The first time I've really gotten a close watch on him from first ball to last. Of course at the mercy of what I'm assigned to for US Open radio where I can contribute

1:03there. Today, Ash Day session happened to be able to really lock in on Alcarez vs. Paul and I was so impressed. So impressed. I don't think Tommy Paul had a no show. I just don't think he could have done anything. Think Alcarez was at an altitude that Tommy can't quite reach. You can certainly look at Paul's first serve percentage and say that's an area where he underperformed. I also thought that he was reaching for a little extra on the first serve because at the end of the day the one thing that he actually was doing better than Carlos throughout the match was he was serving bigger. Did that come at the expense of him missing more for serves? Probably yes. I actually was told by Brad Stein earlier in the week. This was during qualifying week that he was kind of working with Tommy on not trying

2:05to serve as many aces and to do a little bit more serve mixing. So a little more variety, a little more spot serving. Just to sort of pitch a smarter game instead of trying to kind of gun aces into the corners always, which I don't think they feel suits Tommy Paul's serve or Mac is the best way to maximize his serve. I thought he served great throughout the tournament. I watched Paul play Prismatch and what was the match after that? Oh, Bublick and I watched the entire Tommy Paul Bublick match. I think his serve has been great. I think there were moments against Carlos where his serve was the main thing keeping him in it. But other than that, I think it was just outclassed whenever points were developing because Alcarez was on his A game. I don't think he's lost a thing. The forehand was obviously the shot that you were going to circle coming off of the wrist surgery.

3:06It's not weaker. It's not softer. Alcarez hit a 106 mile per hour forehand passing shot on the full stretch on a ball that was coming in with a lot of pace. I actually thought he mostly had to hit like obviously he was hitting at open stance, but it was mostly sort of arm and wrist action to get the ball through the court. He did not have the opportunity to set with his legs and to really coil and rotate through the forehand. It was kind of this full stretch, like wristy, wippy flick and it went 106 miles per hour. I look at shots like that. It's like, yeah, the wrist is okay. The shot that set up the match point, it's like a neutral forehand cross by Tommy. This was probably shot 12 or 13 of the rally. I think Alcarez wanted out.

4:06He hit a short cross court angle, but it was also probably like a 95 mile per hour forehand and you realized the geometrical challenge of hitting the ball. It was also waist height. It was like a waist high forehand and he hits it on a short angle. You're not really getting that downward trajectory. You don't have a lot of court to work with because you have to bring the ball down before the sideline. Now he both hits it really hard, brings it down before the sideline, finds the sharp angle, the amount of rotation and speed and precision that that takes is off the charts. I thought Alcarez's forehand was the best ground stroke on the court against Tommy Paul by a country mile. The big headline here is the risk surgery hasn't taken any juice or venom out of that

5:09shot. And there's nothing regardless of what happens for the rest of the US open. That is the huge relief here for Carlos Alcarez and Alcarez fans alike and tennis as a whole. That's a huge relief. I thought tactically though he did a couple of things really, really nicely. First off Tommy played Bublick in the prior round and I do want to talk about that match at some point during this show, but I'm going to hold off one of the things that Sasha really couldn't help himself with is hitting drop shots. Dino Prismich in the fourth set was in a long five four service game, sorry four five service game. So he had to hold to stay in the match and it was a back and forth battle and it was really pretty epic and it was a fun atmosphere out on grandstand and Prismich hit two drop shots in a row. He made both of them, but he lost both of the points because Tommy tracked down the drop shots. Bublick had virtually no success with his drop shot certainly no regular success.

6:12Tommy's a terrible guy to drop shot. He isn't somebody who typically drifts back, not unless he absolutely has to. So he holds his position well. He's lightning quick. He's got really good hands up at the net once he gets there. He also has good feel for where his opponent is. So he typically picks the right shot when he gets to drop shots. He's not a good guy to drop shot. It's one of the reasons why I think especially early in the Paul Alcaraz head to head, which by the way, Alcaraz has been getting better and better and Tommy was asked in press about kind of playing Alcaraz over the years and how it's changed. The first thing Tommy said was it's getting worse. It is getting worse. It's getting much worse. He's still look, he held his own in this match. Again, I actually thought he played decently well and we are talking about a player who is 20 in the world and the rankings.

7:15But remember, he shut down his season after the US Open last year. In reality, I think he's about 15 conservatively. He's the 15th best player in the world. US Open, hard court, maybe he's even better, whatever it is. Let's not take for this for granted. For Alcaraz to routine the world number 15 when he's coming back from four plus months without matches off of risk surgery. Let's not take for granted how impressive that was. And it's... I lost my train of thought, didn't I? What was I talking about? What was I talking about? Oh, I was talking about the drop shots. Okay, one of the reasons why Alcaraz I think had a little bit or was bothered by Tommy early in the head to head is because Tommy's speed was squeezing a lot of Carlos's favorite attacking patterns. Part of that is just playing the drop shot often. I think Paul's a drop shot killer.

8:15You know what? Alcaraz didn't really do for the first set and a half set in three quarters in this match. Didn't really drop shot. Now, eventually once Tommy started kind of forgetting about it, especially in the third set, Carlos got really comfortable in the match and we did start to see a few more drop shots. But you often see what a player's game plan is early. And I think in the first set, Carlos hit one and then he was sort of up a break midway to late in the second before he hit another one. This was a performance where he didn't want to invite the cat in mouse exchanges because Tommy is one of the few guys who can actually meet him there with his athleticism and his hands and his creativity. He wanted to make this a straight ahead ball striking battle and you don't do that by hitting drop shots. Alcaraz was very disciplined to avoid that. I've got two more tactical keys that I want to shout out for Alcaraz.

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10:20soundtracks. Also perfect for meditation. If that's your thing, yoga, if that's your thing, are just focusing during work. Use the link in the description for an automatic $10 off or use the code, Gil 10. So Carlos was not hitting his drop shot and he was playing his backhand down the line as often as possible, often going behind Tommy because I thought that Tommy's plan defensively when Paul was pressured into his forehand, he was trying to go up the middle of the court at Alcarazza's backhand. So I could say down the line, but it's not really a down the line shot because he's trading. He's not attacking. It's more of a central ball into a big target. Middle of the court find Alcarazza's backhand. That sounds to me like a really good play defensively. You're not opening up any angles and you're getting away from Carlos's lethal forehand.

11:26And Alcaraz kept stinging Tommy by going right behind him with the backhand down the line. And instead of trying to go around him where he can really showcase his speed, he ends up just rushing him into the forehand relentlessly and drawing a lot of errors that way. But I think the biggest thing is Alcarazza's setting that forehand, a forehand exchange, which is so much more favorable when it's when it's Alcaraz versus Paul, forehand, a forehand is so much more favorable for Carlos than the backhand, a backhand. And when you look at Tommy's backhand, really precise stays pretty low, really consistent. It's just not the shot that you're going to make a lot of progress on or not the wing that you're going to make a lot of progress on. Carlos going backhand, line, backhand middle way more often, even when Tommy was trying to bait him by taking his forehand line at Alcarazza's backhand.

12:30Right. When I say bait him, usually if you give a right hand or that ball, you're showing them open court on the backhand cross, usually the right hander is taking that backhand cross open court. Carlos didn't take the bait because he knows that Tommy's backhand, first of all, Tommy is speed enough to recover that open court and his backhand is his better defensive wing. And Alcarazza was so mindful about just going back behind hard at the forehand, back behind hard at the forehand. So that was great tactically. The other thing was the second serve. Tommy started the match standing in first point of the match, Paul crushed and rushed, right. He took a backhand and came into the net off of his second return. Wasn't surprised by that play. Like if you hear how Tommy talks about this match up and even if you've had the pleasure of picking or hearing Brad Stein talk about what is necessary to punch up

13:34a punch up above your weight and beat somebody like sinner or Alcarazza, there has to be an elevated level of risk and aggression in their view. So I wasn't surprised to see a crush and rush right away, but then it's how is Alcaraz going to scare Tommy off of that tactic other than scrambling into the corner and hitting sick passing shots. And there was definitely some of that. But Alcaraz rolled the dice on the second serve, went hard body and eventually Tommy actually moved back, which I thought was a victory for Alcarazza. If Paul is going to move back on the second return, he doesn't really have the the weight of shot from deep in the court to bother Alcaraz if he's going to stand deep on the kick serve. So for me, that was mission accomplished for Alcaraz. He's hit enough big hard uncomfortable second serves into Tommy's body where Tommy's basically waving the white flag and saying, all right, I'm sick of getting jammed and then getting hurt on the plus one. I'm just going to move back and now Alcarazza doesn't have to worry at all about being

14:39rushed. If Tommy hits a deep return, don't get me wrong, it's a neutral rally. But for me, that's still a victory for Alcaraz. Good second serves, back ends down the line, staying away from the drop shot to create a baseline slug fest. It's the baseline slug fest where Alcaraz feasted again. His forehand unmatched, his athleticism, huge factor, you know, and just covering the court against Tommy's ball striking and they're just it felt like there was not much Tommy could do in these rallies. I'm sorry, it just felt like there wasn't much he can do. So great Alcaraz performance. He gets Ben Shelton next. So I guess I'll just transition right into Shelton, CT POS quickly because I don't have much on this. I did not see much of that. CT POS I talked about on my last show. I talked about

15:41the feast upset in some detail tactically. I did not mention Patrick Muratogulu, which some people are commenting about. You know, I don't know what Patrick is is working on with Stephanos, but I do think not knowing this firsthand, but this is maybe something something that I've heard over the years and maybe it's just a sense that I get. I think Patrick is really good at it's instilling confidence in his in his pupils, you know, I think he's very good at that. That can go a pretty long way, especially when a partnership is fresh and you don't have a lot of scar tissue built up. So you kind of come in, you build up the player, you make them believe if you are an authoritative voice and you make that player believe you've got what it takes. I thought like the Brad Gilbert Coco Gough partnership was a good example of this happening where Coco had immediate results when Brad came in and basically everybody thought Brad was going to hone in on Coco's weaknesses and fix

16:44her serve in her forehand. And instead Brad was like Coco, screw all these haters. You're awesome. You're your serves great. Your forehand's great. We're going to do some things tactically to put you in position to succeed. So we might change the approach on the serve. We might change the approach on the forehand, but we're not going to mess with the technique there. You've got this and it ended up working like a charm and Coco got red hot. It didn't last forever, but I think that that is one of Patrick's talents is making a player confident again. And if you've watched CT pass in the last two years and how he's dipped in big moments, how badly he's played big points, there's clearly been a lack of confidence. That's what that comes from. So I'll give Patrick credit for that. Technically speaking, I don't really know what they've been up to or what they've been concentrated on or how things have changed in that respect. That's a mystery to me. Do I think maybe some of the, oh, this is a new chapter in CT

17:51pass's career? Do I think that some of that has been maybe overblown? I don't know, right? This is a great run to beat Fieson, LaHechka and Lloyd Harris. I know Lloyd is lower in the rankings, but he's been playing some pretty good tennis too. That is, that is really, those are really good wins. Can't take anything away. That's a, that's a very solid fourth round run, but it is one tournament. So I definitely want to see more than one tournament. No doubt about that. What was discouraging about this CT pass Shelton match? Pretty, pretty heavily discouraging was how dominant Ben was on serve. Like it was a level of dominance. Shelton's a great server. Shelton is second in hold rate in 2026 after center, right? So this is an elite server, but this was a bloodbath. This was a total bloodbath. Shelton lost 14 points on serve in a

18:52three set match. 14 points total. You could gather from that did not face a break point. Although, if they come in bunches, you can face a break point, of course, but he did not, Shelton did not face a break point. He won 70% of his second serve points. He won 84% of his first serve points. I am not going to go into what I saw in terms of CT passes shortcoming on return. I think that Ben definitely put together the, the variety on serve that he and his father are always looking for. I think he mixed it up a lot. Definitely made it feel if you're CT pass like he didn't know what was going to be coming his way. So the unpredictability factor was definitely really high, but other than that, I can't speak much on it. All I'll say is if you want to be a top 20 top 10 level player, I don't know what CT passes goals are right now. And I don't really know what our goals

19:57or expectations I should say, what our expectations even should be for him. That's even hard to gauge. But if you want to be top 20 top 10, you just got to be a little bit more competitive. Obviously, then then CT pass was against the Shelton serve. That was a very uncompetitive showing. That part would be concerning. But this was also Ben's best performance of the tournament quite clearly. I could definitely gather that. It was very much in the, in the family of some of the performances that we saw in Toronto, a level of focus. He didn't feel the need to really get over his skis emotionally. He stayed very calm, kind of kept his head down, stayed in the zone. There was a serenity in his play that was very comfortable. And for the first time in the tournament, his forehand was reliable in this match. So straight set win for Shelton over CT pass 626364.

21:00Where do we want to go from here? I want to talk about some of the physical matches that I've seen because there were a couple of matches in the last two or three days that I think really were decided by legs. And the first one was Tien over Menshik. I was court side for this one on Armstrong. This was last night. And I thought Tien actually had an off night. His ball striking for me was not up to his regular standards. His forehand was much more hot and cold than what I'm used to. It had some rough patches. I thought that he would... It's not like he was getting beaten cleanly from the back of the court by Menshik on a regular basis. But I actually thought that he would be more consistent in beating Menshik from the back of the court. You know that Jakob is going

22:05to out serve learner heavily. So that's a given. And Tien needs to make up for it by winning most of the rallies. And for some of the match, I just didn't think he was managing to really impose himself in that part of the game. And it was because there was too much inconsistency on his forehand mostly. Learner ends up going down two sets to one, down a break early in the fourth, down 40, 15, down two love 40, 15 in the fourth set. And then hits a couple of amazing passing shots. Tien with the ball control and the balance when he's on the move playing out of the corners, he hits really great passing shots, especially down the line. You've got to be careful for his passing shot down the line. Although on the backhand, I think he rolls it cross court really well.

23:08So I don't know. I would love to see the data on where which direction Tien passes. But basically he came up with some really awesome shots in this two love game, ignited the crowd and started to kind of buckle down, regain his consistency, got it back on serve, and then Menshik's leg started to fade. Tien did the same thing to Monefis. It just wasn't as impressive because Gael is 40 years old now. And his fitness is no longer world class. So it was no surprise that Tien was able to really make Gael suffer, make things really physical to the point where Monefis was basically dead on his feet and just had trouble staying in the match from a pure cardio standpoint. Menshik's another story, right? He did the same thing, learner. Learner is so physical to play. First off, the way he moves

24:17the ball around the court, the constant changing of direction, the depth of his shots, the height of his shot staying so low, you know, really making Menshik sink into his ground strokes over and over again, intentionally playing the low ball. No doubt about that. The drive backhand stays low as it is, learner would even mix in some backhand slice. Thought Tien also got himself in trouble. This is something that I don't think he was consistent enough in doing. Menshik got himself, sorry, Tien got himself in trouble by overflighting the forehand, overspinning it, lifting it too much. Sometimes he would hit his forehand cross court and it would be a little bit higher, a little bit slower, a little bit spinnier and if it dropped short, now that's Menshik's favorite forehand. He can flatten it out hard inside out or inside in. But if you keep it low, we've talked about this a lot. If you keep the ball low on Menshik's forehand, he's not really going to hurt you.

25:17Just why another reason why I thought that Tien would dominate the baseline battle, which he didn't for a long time. But he really got to Jakob's legs. Menshik looked like he was getting a little bit crampy at the end of the fourth set. He was definitely getting wobbly. Could no longer hang in rallies, lost his shot tolerance, lost his second serve completely. When the legs went away, the second serve got really weak, whether it be double faults or just lacking speed on the second serve. Then Jakob definitely had a second wind. He went off court, clocked and started on the change of a tire break for another two minutes. He probably got seven and a half ish, if I were to guess, seven and a half minutes off court, a lot of electrolytes. It was a cool night. He was able to physically recover in a way. But I think he only really got up to 70, 75%. He could move quickly in short bursts. But ultimately, there was no staying power. And Tien had his legs. Menshik didn't.

26:26Learner was defending his butt off in the fifth set. Holy moly. Do you know what percent of movement Tien lost in the fifth at the end of the fifth? Try 0.0. I thought he was moving quicker at the end of the fifth than he was at the start of the match. Energizer, buddy, full batteries, physical, animal, learner Tien, physical animal. The other one that I thought was similar was Paul over Bublick. Alexander Bublick had three really good sets of tennis in him. And I didn't know what to expect coming into this US Open for Sasha. I think I said this on the on the last show. But with the 30 plus days off and what we've seen from Bublick throughout the year, where I just think there's been less discipline, shake your fitness. And I actually think Bublick's concentration, focus, competitive drive, decision making, thought all of that was on point. On point.

27:31Wasn't making a lot of dumb decisions was really just playing great tennis. And then come the fourth set. I think he got really, really tired. So Paul wins it in five. He comes from behind. He reverses last year's result. You know, it was it was six one in the fifth set. Bublick over Paul in the third round last year. Tommy was playing through a hernia. So actually, Bublick was in better shape than Tommy in that fifth set. And also I think Sasha was in better shape last year. I do. I think his fitness was better. There were matches throughout the clay season where I thought like, where I felt like Bublick was getting tired pretty quickly. And this was another one of those matches. You know, this time Tommy was strong in the fifth, ready to run, ready to keep the ball in. And Bublick's execution and his patience just fell off a cliff because he got really tired in the legs. So last major of the year. There's a general fatigue

28:39factor involved in this tournament. And I think some of the the fittest players in the world, like learner TN and Tommy Paul have won some matches with their conditioning. So that's a point I wanted to make. We also saw Alexander blocks upset Flavio Caboli, although I think this is not going to age as an upset. I think one year from now, blocks and Caboli will likely be a lot closer in ranking than what they are now. No blocks is the 28 seed. Caboli is the five seed without looking at the actual rankings. That'll give you kind of a general idea. And I think come US Open next year. These guys are not separated by more than 10 spots. That's just how good Alexander blocks is. I'm a I'm a big fan and seeing him in person gave me a larger appreciation of his physicality.

29:47He's got tree trunks for legs. A massive frame, which you can see on the serve, you know, he's got the height to serve big. He's got a very powerful frame, but he's also got a huge engine. And you see that in his patients, his rally tolerance. And I've said it before, but I do want to say it again because it's what's so exciting about blocks. He has the ability to play this big serving counter punching style in a very similar style that we saw Medvedev play, Zverev play, her coach play, men's chic play. You could argue that blocks is more aggressive than them. I got mostly people seemed to agree with me when I put out this take on on Twitter, but I did get a little bit of pushback. Like are we sure that Alexander blocks his counter puncher? Look, I pulled up the data, the 52 week data. And for me, when I watch him, I feel like in a in a baseline rally, he's he becomes a counter puncher. But if he gets a short ball on his forehand, yeah, he's going to attack.

30:53Does he get a lot of short balls on his forehand because he serves the lights out? Yeah, he does. Will he go to the net? Sure. He likes to go to the net and finish off with Vali, but he's not somebody from the back of the court who's going to play with a ton of offensive urgency or he's not someone from the back of the court is going to play with a lot of pace. So like I pulled up the data, you can say that he's not a counter puncher. And I'm curious what people think about this. He is in attack percentage, according to court side advantage. Despite having huge serve, his in attack percentage is 1% below tour average. His forehand speed is 1 mile per hour below average. His in percentage is above average. Same thing on the backhand. His backhand is actually much slower than tour average. I think it's his biggest weakness, actually, his ability to generate pace on the backhand. That's his biggest weakness. I think the game plan right now, if you're playing blocks, is you want to give him some slower, higher balls to his backhand or some some slice to his backhand. Either low and slower high and slow,

32:01but I think you want to slow ball his backhand and then attack off of it. That would be my tactic against blocks right now. Okay, so backhand. Same thing below average speed above average in percentage. And then if you look at his average rally length, points played under four shots, slightly below average points played nine, nine shots or more slightly above average. And again, this is a guy who serves huge. So when a guy is serving that big, but on average, they're playing longer points than than most of the tour. The speeds are down. The consistency is up. The in-attack percentage is down like all of his analytics point towards this is a more defensive oriented player. And to me, he is. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I love it. I really love it because I think he has the ability to play a brand of tennis very similar to Medvedev or Zverev. But even potentially he can step it up because what he has in his forehand is a very, very trusty

33:06shot. And a shot that he can generate with pretty comfortably. Zverev can generate, but it's not trusty. Medvedev can't really generate, but it is trusty. Blocks just has a forehand that I actually genuinely like, you know, in its totality. Really exciting to me. So my big point here on this match is that this is an upset this year. Come next year. Blocks over Koboli. I don't think it'll look like an upset. So I wasn't surprised to see this one. And I'm excited to see if Blocks can continue this run. He plays Francisco Surrender Low tomorrow. Let's talk Francis Tiafo. Tiafo with a couple of big wins. First of all, against Valentine Vashiro. He made 13 unforced errors in three sets.

34:06That'll do. Vashiro Vashiro's forehand couldn't hang. Tiafo peppered it brutally relentlessly, viciously. Tiafo loves to hit his backhand cross court. And just like I was talking about with Alcaraz, played a lot of backhand line, played a lot of backhand, middle at the forehand of Vashiro, really tactically focused match, but just unbelievably clean, incredibly clean. And then he beat Daniel Medvedev today to make another US open quarter final. He told me earlier in the week that his body is not at its best, that he's not feeling in tip-top shape, but that he's battling through it. No excuses. I'm here to fight. I'm here to compete. But he did admit to me that his body was feeling it. What I've noticed is that Francis, since the opening round against Martin Dom, which got a little bit scary for him, he has been, his concentration has been incredible. His sense of focus and urgency

35:13has been incredible. And perhaps it's even helped him a little bit, that he's felt the need to save his body. And he's been able to actually play with a little bit more mental focus because he's trying to be as efficient as possible after the five-setter to start the run, where I think, I think coming off of that five-setter, he was thinking, this isn't really great. I'm kind of feeling it physically, but the way he played after that, I don't think he's actually dropped a set, since then, the way he's played has been a guy who really doesn't want to waste any time out there. Easier said than done. Of course, it's not as simple as, oh, I'd really like to win in straights, like good strategy. You might be thinking like, oh, so you're telling me that he wants to win in straights. That's his brilliant plan. I don't know. Take what you will. That's all I can say on that.

36:20But Tiafo obliterated Medvedev's second serve. The second serve number was horrible for Daniel. This was a match that I could not watch from start to finish. I missed plenty of it, but I saw that Francis was serving Medvedev's forehand a ton, using that slider. Serving volume, unbig points on most of the biggest points of the match that Tiafo was serving from what I saw. And in the third set, this was definitely true. Tiafo was going to serve in Vali. And that's a return of, I actually haven't seen anybody do that to Daniel in a long, long time, but Tiafo did it well. And he certainly has the Vali's to do it. I was talking with some people about Francis's Vali. And where I've settled on Tiafo's Vali is he's got bad technique and is still a great Vali. He does not have textbook technique, sometimes his positioning. And

37:21there are things he does with the positioning of his body and his, like the way he sort of sometimes doesn't get down to the ball or doesn't move his feet towards the ball. It's just not very textbook, but his hands are so good, he's still a great Vali. And I love to see him serve in Vali on big points, not overplaying the tactic though. He didn't want to groove Medvedev into a rhythm on that tactic because if if Daniel knows it's coming and you give him enough looks at it, he'll start to crunch returns, you know, hard, low or well directed down the line. Like he, he will find his range and hurt you from that deeper term position. But I think if you only use it when you have to and it seemed like Francis was saving it for big points, worked really, really well. Medvedev lost a couple of tie breaks in this match, worth pointing out that that's been a problem for Daniel. His tie break record is horrible. He's way in the red

38:22this year in terms of tie break record was not clutch, missed some, you know, missed a lot of backhands honestly in the third set tie break. Backhand totally failed them in the third set tie break. I mean, three or four that you in his in his prime, you would just never see him miss. Even a forehand return in that in that breaker that I remember, you would never see him miss. So it's just not even though he finds himself in the fourth round, it's not the old Medvedev. Right now, I don't think anybody would argue that it is, but tight, tight three setter, but certainly there's just moments on big points, right? Where he's making mistakes that you just know that Medvedev in his top five past, he's not making these mistakes. The whole crux of his game

39:24is that he's not making these mistakes. He's automatic from the back of the court. He was the most consistent player from the back of the court, bar none. It was him. And that's not the case anymore, especially on big points. And the second serve continues to be a problem. I'm going to give you the second serve stat. I know I alluded to it a moment ago, but he was four of the match, 37 percent, 11, sorry, 17 for 46, 17 for 46, five double faults. So not a horrendous number. Actually, not even really a bad number of double faults for three sets, but he was not winning points. Let's see what the average speed was. An average speed can sometimes be a bad stat for Medvedev's second serve because sometimes he just goes massive on it. Yeah. In this case, it was 97. So I don't know what to make of that. That's a, that's a pedestrian number, not a, not a bad number, not a good number. 97 is just kind of middle of the road. Arthur Jeya impressed me against Michael

40:30Zhang. Played kind of like a Spanish guy more so than a French guy. Good physicality, really good forehand that is reliable. And he, he accelerates well on it. He can build off fence with it. He loves that inside out short angle plays with a lot of heart. Doesn't serve huge kind of just protects his back end uses it as a shield, but it's not a major weakness either. I like Arthur Jeya. Great rankings rise from him. He deserves a lot of props. He's going to be in the 60s, at least when the rankings come out next week. And he was a little bit outside of 250 in the world about a year ago. So he's been doing a ton of winning in the last year and just get used to seeing his name on tour. He's not going anywhere. I think that's all I've got. Let me just go through my notes. See if I missed anything. We talked about Bublick. We talked about TN. We talked about blocks. We talked

41:30about Jeya. Oh, Serendolo over Fritz. That's the one we missed. And then I want to look at the barabs half of the draw real quick as well. So Serendolo over Fritz. Yeah. From two sets to love down. That's a massive upset. The reason why it's not top of mind for me is because that's a match that I barely saw. I have talked to people about what happened. I saw what Fritz said in the press conference. I've looked at some stats. So I'm just kind of piecing things together when it comes to this particular result. One of one of Taylor's toughest losses ever. And one of the toughest losses in his career. He had that first round loss against Brandon Holt at the US open a few years ago. That one was brutal in a different way, but he was just trying to get his tournament started. I guess first rounds as disappointing as it is when you lose in the first round. It can be kind of tricky just getting into the tournament. That first match. I think for Fritz to be dominant in

42:31his first three rounds really. And then to be up two sets to love and to lose from there and a quick break in the third set. Just a stunning turn of events. But the thing is Taylor was not playing all that great in the first two sets. So he was never he was never really at a point in the match where he was confident in the things he was doing out there. Surrendle was also down love 40 at I think it was four all in the fifth. And hits three on return serves. Two of them were really good spots. One of them was returnable for Taylor. But one of the big ways that Surrendle improved as the match went on was he started to serve really, really well. And we've seen it at certain points in this season for Francisco Surrendle and it hasn't been consistent. But certain points in the season we've seen like a level of serving that is better than usual from him. And when he starts to really hit his spots on serve, it's it's pretty nightmare-ish with what he brings behind

43:32it with the forehand. There were some of that, but it was you know tentative ball striking from Fritz just not confident in in really imposing himself the worst way to play against Surrendle. And I think a guy likes Vera over the years has not enjoyed playing Surrendle low. Fritz hasn't liked it either. To play him with a lot of like neutral balls. If you're somebody who who likes to trade from the back of the court and you're not the most disruptive baseline or and Fritz is not Fritz is not a disruptive baseline or he's a very solid baseline or rock solid, not disruptive. Surrendle really hurts those players because I do think he's really good at settling into that baseline rhythm and then breaking points open with what is often the most dangerous ground stroke on the court, which is his forehand. You gotta really Surrendle low beat Stroof in the previous round. It was a

44:38five-setter, right? But the fact that it went five is kind of an example. I think you have to I think you want to make him defend like you want to be disruptive against Surrendle low because if you're dropping the ball and playing baseline rallies and you're like let's go 10 balls here. We're just trading. We're just banging from the back. Surrendle is a top 10 player in the world from that position. You've got to take advantage of the fact that he's got a weaker serve that he is not the scrappiest player defensively. That he does not volley too well. And if you can sort of just kind of disrupt his timing enough, you can get him to spray. But just trading from the back with him is a really dangerous game. And that's why I think Zverev and Fritz

45:39have both struggled to play Francisco Surrendle low just as a couple of two examples. Awesome run though for Francisco. And now you look at this top half of the draw. Zverev's half. Zverev played, I guess, his best. There were moments against to be low that look shaky. But the first set was good. The third set was good. So Zverev finally looked settled. I guess he's kind of in a way lucky to be still alive in round four with the way that he's played in this tournament so far. But other than that, it is broken wide open with TN versus Hatchinov and Surrendle versus Blox and Vandazonchkul versus Jeya as a fourth round match in a major. Pretty remarkable. Zverev has Dardery next. This is a half of the draw where there are pretty much only wrong answers. No matter who you picked, I mean some people might have had a learner.

46:40And of course, people would have had Zverev. But other than that, it's pretty much wrong answers only. And that's what happens sometimes when it comes to the prediction scheme. Sometimes you're taking a test and there are really no right answers on the test. Because nobody was picking Vandazonchkul or Jeya in the quarters. But one of them is getting there. It's going to be interesting to see how everything plays out. I am going to wrap it up there. Hope you enjoyed. Don't forget to subscribe. I'll see you next time.