It's been a rather strangely inconsistent year from Kyle, almost from the get go, certainly much more than a couple of weeks.

The positives are clearly those continued very good looking and competitive performances against really top players. He has often shown he really belongs and if looking for his best level, which always interests me, I think his best is getting better. Beating a top 10 player would be good for him and that should come before too long.

However, he has dropped that level rather too often against other players, there seem to have been more dips than in the last year or two ( he always has stuck in one or two ) with a number of 'meh' performances over the months, such as the losses to Matthew Barton, Jared Donaldson and now Joao Domingues. I didn't see any of the latest and Domingues is at least very used to winning this year, but that's at domestic futures level. Kyle should surely have been far too good. Indeed not just these losses, but one or two wins have hardly hit any heights. So for whatever reasons he is often not near his best level. Folk have mentioned work on his game, but maybe there is more he needs to consider. "Steady enough" is surely what he isn't, he is up and down. 

Finally a statistical thing. Kyle has gone all year without winning a match after having lost the first set. First set won, he is 9-3, first set lost he is 0-10. Indeed since he last won such a match ( 2-6 7-6(3) 7-6(4) vs Yen-hsun Lu in Cincinnati qualifying so certainly fought for that one ) he is 23-5 and 0-15 respectively. While of course matches are heavily weighted towards the winner of the first set, often simply the better player at least on the day ( and I have sometimes queried sample sizes ) no victories out of the last 15 first set losses is not clever against a variety of opponents. Today was the closest he's got to the full turnaround this year, but then it is a match he should never have lost the first set of or the match in the first place.

Kyle has great talent, he belongs at ATP tour level and I expect him to stay there and push on again, but he needs to find more consistency. His ranking points this year are mostly suffering not from his displays against the very best but some poor looking early exits to others. And if his ranking starts to drift, as it could when he has more points to defend, that can have consequences re entries and seedings that he could do without.

indiana wrote:

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Perspective has been here, with thoughts very little of which could be called OTT. And in perspective Domigues is a 23 yo who has been in great winning form in domestic clay futures, taking him to a CH still of WR 242. So it looks on paper a very poor loss especially with Kyle's own clay ability, but bad losses happen to most though there have as I noted been a few this year in amongst some very good displays.

Anyway, what might suggest some issue that may have had some bearing is if Kyle has withdrawn from Madrid as has been reported in some places.

Hopefully he is / will be OK and soon on an upward path again.

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 MTF entry list shows Kyle as out but apart from that no narrative to explain why...