It has not been a good week for predictions. Trying to spot a potential champion in an open draw (well, open if you take Novak Djokovic out of the equation and assume that he is a heavy favourite to have a say in the eventual resting place for the trophy) is no easy task.

But as you scan the list of names for contenders, do not skim over that of Matteo Berrettini. The world No.9 moved into the second round with a 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, 6-0 win over Guido Pella. The whirlwind of 20 aces and 47 winners lasted for two hours and 16 minutes and made a convincing case for Berrettini to do some damage here in the coming days.

Anyone scanning the order of play with half an eye might have seen a chap from Italy playing a chap from Argentina and assumed that No.3 Court would be occupied for several hours with two clay courters trying to come to terms with the vagaries of grass. But they would have been wrong.

Berrettini is the current Queen’s Club champion, a title he added to his grass court Stuttgart trophy of 2019 (fair play, though, as the other three wins of his career so far have all come on clay). As for Pella, it is true that he has won more matches on clay – 63 to be precise – than on any other surface while his grass court tally stands at just eight. But those eight wins were rather important.

Pella has what you might call ‘previous’ around these parts. Two years ago, he reached the quarter-finals here (the best Grand Slam result of his career) – and he did it by removing Kevin Anderson and Milos Raonic, the finalists of 2018 and 2016 respectively, from his path. The year before, he dismissed Marin Cilic, the 2017 finalist, on his way to the third round. From this we can deduce that blokes with walloping serves who fancy their chances on a grass court hold no fear for Mr P.

And when it comes to walloping serves, they do not wallop much harder that Berrettini’s. The shot is a positive piledriver and it comes with a forehand to match (it’s the accessories that really make an outfit).

He was explaining during Queen’s week that as he was growing up (and up and up), it soon became apparent that he was going to be tall, so his coach took him aside and told him, ‘Look, son, if you’re going to be that big, we’d better get you an equally big serve’. Or words to that effect.

Pella is no seven stone weakling, mind you. He is a strapping six-footer who weighs in at a muscular 174lb (79kg). But Berrettini is 6ft 5in (195cm) and 209lb (95kg). When people talk about the weight of his shot, they are not just talking about the topspin. When he clumps the ball, it stays well and truly clumped. 

The sheer power of Berrettini’s game was just enough to win the first set but, even so, it was mighty close (just the one break of serve). But Pella with his lightning-fast feet, left-handed guile and not inconsiderable heft of his own, was not done yet. Frustrating the big man with a devilish tactic of getting everything back – always a sly move – he broke serve with a reflex volley and then held firm to level the scores at a set apiece.

Berrettini needed to clear his head and regroup. He nipped off court for a bathroom break and returned for the third set with a new focus. He knew what he had to do; now he just had to do it. So he did.

As he served with added muscle and hammered his forehand, he kept Pella at bay for the third set and then flattened him in the fourth. His fastest second serve – a 119mph belter – was 6mph faster than Pella’s average first serve speed. And his fastest serve, a 139mph thunderbolt, was 13mph faster than Pella’s but still 4mph slower than he had served at Queen’s a matter of days ago. Clearly, there is still more to come from the Queen’s Club champion.