David Goffin faces Daniel Evans in the first round of the 2022 Australian Open on Tuesday, January 18th 2022.
Will David Goffin be fit enough to fight through what will be a tough battle here, or will Daniel Evans continue to shine after his strong start to the 2022 season?
David Goffin has gone 2-2 in his matches so far this year, most recently losing to Andy Murray after he had to retire after the first set with an injury. Every tournament is another blow for David Goffin in my opinion, where he either finds out of some injury issue, or just loses early on because of his lack of matches under his belt. David Goffin can play incredibly well if he is at his best and can beat whomever. However, I have not seen this in a while, and I don’t know whether he can turn this slump around.
Daniel Evans started the year off in great fashion, going 5-0 in all of his matches (at the time of writing), having beaten the likes of Struff, Shapovalov, and Isner. Currently, Evans is in the semi finals of the Sydney Open and he will be working very hard to ensure he gets into his maiden final of the year. Even if he does lose to Karatsev, Daniel has shown enough to suggest that he will bounce back quickly and get things going off strongly here at the Australian Open.
This is going to be the 3rd meeting between both players, with Daniel Evans having won both of their prior encounters. Although David has achieved more in his career in terms of titles, finals, and earnings, over the last 2 years, Daniel has been miles ahead of David. David is going to hope that he is injury free coming into the AO, but even if he is, he has not had enough match time against actually tough opponents to get used to the rhythm again. I might give him a set, but that’s the maximum I see from David against Daniel.