Rune Loses in 1st Round to Nakashima | Does Sloane Care? | Djokovic Rigged Draw? | 2024 US Open

Rune vs Nakashima so day one of the 2024 US Open wrapped up day two is under way I'm super excited and as you know I made a prediction video and I filled out both the men's and the women's draw and after the first round wraps up I'm going to let you know how many I got right how many I got wrong but some of you guys were wondering Nick why do you have these sheets and why do you write it up by hand why not just print it out or digitally put the names in there and I'm going tell you why because when I write it out there's more meaning to the draw so for example if I'm going to make a selection for a match and I'm actually writing the name I have to be 100% sure that this is the person that I want to pick to win this match if I did it digitally it would be easy to change my mind so there's more at stake when I do it this way I can tell you already that there were a lot of draw Busters yesterday interestingly more drw Busters on the men's side than on the women's side Wimbledon was exactly the opposite but I made one of the greatest calls in the history of tennis by picking Maya joint over Lara zamon this is one of the most legendary picks that I've ever made and I'm very proud of it a lot of people can't tell when I'm joking around because I have a more serious demeanor and I also happen to be somewhat unfunny so I generally try to keep my videos 100% humor free but I can tell you that out of all the matches that I watched yesterday one match stood out not necessarily for the quality of it but more for the significance of it for one player and that's the Nakashima Runa match and a couple years ago I made a video where I put aaras Center and Runa on the thumbnail and I wrote the next big three question mark and I stand behind that video because I do believe that hogar Runa has as much talent as CER and as alarz he reminds me actually a little bit of alaras because he has the variety Runa can hit Drop shots he likes to come to the net he's an unbelievable athlete and as far as Firepower I always had the feeling that run can hit the ball as hard as alarz and as hard as CER back then I thought that Runa actually hit the ball the hardest but I do think now that alaras and CER have improved and they hit the ball as hard as Runa does so there's a tremendous amount of potential in hogar Runa when he beat jokovic at the Paris Indoor Masters everybody thought that he was going to be the next big thing in tennis but unfortunately after having a pretty good season last year where he made the world tour finals we can see a slip in his form this year and currently he's ranked 15 in the world so it's going to be very tough for him to make the year end finals this year and while he has had had some pretty good results this year for example making the semifinals in Cincinnati a couple weeks ago and losing 76 in the third to TFO there also have been some very questionable matches for example losing to Mar Roan and Miami one and one losing to stru IM Munich 2- 0 not playing well against jokovic in the fourth round at Wimbledon and I'm going to add the nashima match from yesterday to the list of strange performances by Runa now before I get into to that I do want to give credit to Nakashima who is an incredible player he has such a positive demeanor on the court he reminds me a little bit of Sampras in that way he's a very complete player has a great backand down the line he serves extremely well very solid aggressive player who also can come to the net and finish the points off there and he also happens to be a tremendous athlete I think that now that we have five Americans in top 20 I think we could have six Americans in the top 20 Nakashima is a top 20 Cal player or more and in yesterday's match against Runa Nakashima played extremely well however there were some signs of why Runa is struggling this year in yesterday's match and I'm going to tell you what they were so in the first set Runa gets broken he's down 5-2 and he's serving to stay in the set and what you want to do when you are serving to stay in the set is win that service game even if you don't happen to break at least at least you get to serve the very first game in the third set and also anytime you're winning points winning games you can shift the momentum into your favor but what does Runa do in yesterday's match he loses his service game to love at 5-2 loses the first set 6-2 then in his first service game in the second set after nashima held in the first game Runa again loses his service game to love so he loses eight straight points on his serve and Runa has a lot of potential on his serve he serves extremely fast he does have some suboptimal technical elements somewhat similar to aaras and I'm going to dedicate an entire video on the Runa serve and actually the Runa forehand so now after losing these eight straight points on his serf he's down a set in a break and he didn't tank in yesterday's match Runa was fighting hard to win this match but when you put yourself in that big of a hole and you got an opponent on the other side who's playing really well this is going to be a tricky situation to get out of so Runa ended up losing that second set 6-1 but he did play pretty well after losing his serve to love he was competitive in those games and in the third set Runa was trying hard he did get broken and then he was down 5-3 in the third and he held a very tough game that went over Duce and then actually when Nakashima was serving for the match at 5-4 Runa had love 30 so he had a chance to get back into the match match which he didn't do nashima ended up holding played really well and won the third set 6'4 now one big weakness and Run game that I've been seeing over the last two years but especially now is shot selection so Runa generally will either go too big or he actually will go too defensive so he has a hard time finding that zone that sometimes alcaras has a hard time finding which alcaras did find starting in Indian Wells this year where you're hitting hard enough to be aggressive and to dominate the rallies without taking unnecessary risk and at times Runa Just Hits too hard too low percentage from very disadvantageous positions in the court and at times Runa just plays too defensive on top of that the biggest problem that I saw in yesterday's match and this is not something that I necessarily seen in other matches was that on at least 20 occasions Runa would serve and then would miss the first ball after the serve into the net whether it was a forehand or a backhand he was missing a lot of balls into the net so he had a tough time getting spit on the ball he didn't move his feet he was kind of holding his ground and he had a very difficult time redirecting those balls back in play so if I was Runa I would practice that shot a lot because it is one of the biggest reasons why he lost to nekima now I will say that it appears the court plays fast at the US Open this year and aashima was was returning well and very long and Central so that is a very tricky ball to play back I will say that because a return that's Central and goes deep there's not many angles you can work with and that is not an easy ball to play however a player of Run's caliber shouldn't have made as many mistakes as he did yesterday off a ball like that so I think the potential for Runa is huge but the danger lies in him settling in the zone between 10 and 20 in the world where a lot of players get stuck at I do feel like it would be a shame if he became a player that's stuck in that zone because I feel like his potential is much higher in my opinion he can be a top five player if he shows more consistency but also if he continues to improve his game because let's face it alaras and CER have made tremendous improvements in their game and Runa has not now the night session Stephens vs Burel yesterday featured Sloan Stevens and a lot of people misunderstand Sloan Stevens they see her the metet her on the court and they think that she doesn't care about tennis and she doesn't try but I can tell you that yesterday's match against Burell was a nightmare for Sloan because she was up six love 4-1 two breaks ended up losing three games in a row it was four all then she breaks is serving for the match at 5'4 gets broken she loses that set 75 is then up 42 and the third and then loses the third set 75 as well so that is a match that is going to stay in Sloan's head for a while that was a rough one and look Sloan's demeanor has always been like that whether she's winning the US Open or whether she's losing in the first round this is just how Sloan is on the court it doesn't mean that she isn't trying it's just the way she is whether she performs optimally when she's that way I have no idea but that is just her personality on the court and I do believe that Sloan cared a lot yesterday playing on Arthur Ash in a n session is a big thing and she's getting a lot of heat on social media undeservingly so the second match Djokovic vs Albot in the night session was jokovic and it was a question mark how he was going to perform after not having played a match in a while but Novak got a comfortable draw I don't think alots could have challenged him much even if Novak wasn't at his absolute best and Novak had a comfortable three set Victory and it's exactly what he needs please stop saying that the draws are rigged they are not I made a video during wimbl and explaining that the third and fourth seed and so on are drawn there's no guarantee that the third seed is going to end up on top or the bottom it's the luck of the draw and jokovic has played well he made the finals of wiland semi-finals of the Australian Open this is one of his worst years that he's ever had despite winning the Olympics and he's still ranked number two because of his good results and when you're ranked number two two yes you can get some more comfortable draws in the first second third and even fourth round than if you were ranked 8 n 10 in the world so guys I'm going to be covering the US Open make sure that you subscribe to both of my channels intuitive tennis is my main Channel where I feature longer videos and intuitive Tenn is 24/7 is my other channel where I feature shorter videos not only shorts but also landscape format videos they're just generally a little bit shorter in length so make sure you subscribe to both channels so you don't miss any future videos