Shapovalov and Tsitsipas Delight the Late-Night Crowd

Denis Shapovalov earned a thrilling 4-6 6-3 7-6 victory over Stefanos Tsitsipas in arguably the most outstanding men’s match of the tournament so far in terms of problem-solving, mental fortitude, and shot-making quality. Despite their young age, each player reacted with remarkable maturity, multiple times throughout the match, to the challenges raised by the other.

How close was it? 200 points were played in total, 100 won by each!

Tsitsipas started well and playing almost-perfect tennis in the first seven games to a 4-3 lead and a well-deserved break, only making two unforced errors (my own count, as usual) until then. More importantly, he won every single point except one (8-1) whenever the two players engaged in baseline rallies during those seven games. In fact, by the time the set ended, Tsitsipas held a 16-3 lead in points determined by baseline rallies** with the only three points in Denis’s favor coming via clean winners on his part. Otherwise, Tsitsipas did not give an inch to Shapovalov, matching him shot-for-shot and power-for-power in every pattern once they began striking back and forth from the back of the court.

** Just to clarify, by “points determined by baseline rallies,” I don’t mean necessarily rallies that went beyond 5 or 6 shots. Therefore, the ATP’s stat of “points won in rallies of 5 shots or more” is not relevant here. I am only counting points in which both players found themselves on equal footing at the baseline at some moment during the point and needed to create an opportunity to win it, or lose it by making an error. For example, the first point of the 1-1 game in the final set won by Tsitsipas and the first point of the very next game won by Shapovalov, two examples among many, do not count although they lasted six shots or above each. That is because player A had a continuous advantage in those points starting with a strong serve and a weak return by player B, thus consisting of him dominating the point throughout, even though it may have lasted over five shots simply because player B scrambled his way to getting a few shots back before eventually succumbing. So, the 16-3 lead by Tsitsipas in my count of baseline rallies at the end of the first set firmly points to a complete domination on his part from the back of the court whenever the players engaged in what was at one point an equally leveled rally.

To turn the tide around, Denis had to take bigger risks against an error-free opponent who was outplaying him from all parts of the court. Instead, it resulted in more unforced errors from the Canadian who eventually lost the first set 6-4. He committed 15 unforced errors (plus two double faults) in that set, while Tsitsipas only chipped in eight, with no double faults. It was a set played completely on Stefanos’s terms, an unusual position for Denis to be in considering that his shot-making (or error-making) performance usually determines the outcome of his matches. In other words, Shapovalov is more accustomed to having the match on his racket, for better or worse. Yet, Tsitsipas essentially reduced him to the role of the reactive player rather than proactive one by making him chase balls and returning big, taking away his preferred 1-2 punch pattern. Shapovalov’s 55% first-serve performance did not help either, crippling his chances to set up the second shot.

What do you do as a player when the opponent takes away your options and imposes his game? (1) You fall back to your most reliable shot/pattern and, (2) you hope that your opponent slides down just enough from his sky-high level so that you can reestablish the equilibrium in the match.

Number 1 requirement centered on the need on Denis’s part to improve his first-serve percentage so that he can find opportunities to inject his favorite weapon, the 1-2 punch, into the flow of match. By the time he was up a break at 4-1 and seemed to have swung the pendulum in his favor, he had served 17 out of 18 first serves in and won a number of points by either forced return errors or winners on the second shot. Mission number one was accomplished.

As for number 2, Tsitsipas had already begun showing small signs of coming down from his heights of the first 7 games when he missed two easy forehands at 40-15 in the eighth but still held serve, and then, followed that up with two more forehand unforced errors when he served for the set at 5-4. He still did enough to pocket the first set, deservedly so, but considering that he only made one forehand unforced error until 4-3, 40-15, the four that he made since then in his last two service games caused a big enough dent in his armor to bleed over to the second set. He was noticeably more error-prone in the early part of the second, recording six unforced errors at one point compared to Shapovalov’s one. He managed to brush it off as the set progressed, finishing with still six less unforced errors than his opponent (15-9), but it was too little too late to recover from the two-break hole in which he found himself at 1-5 down.

His confidence buoyed by the stunning turn-around in his first-serve percentage (80% in the second set vs 55% in the first) and the accompanying early break, Shapovalov also reversed the trend with regard to baseline rallies. Now, he was the one running Tsitsipas around and winning the aforementioned rally points. After going 3-16 in the first set in such points, Shapovalov led Tsitsipas by three (9-6) in the second.

After the disastrous first three games, Tsitsipas recovered some of his rhythm but never found the quality level that he had in the first set again, largely because Shapovalov elevated his and put his 1-2 punch to work, enough to halt him from gaining any substantial traction on return games.

As the third set began, the task of problem-solving fell this time on Tsitsipas’s shoulders, and he certainly rose to the occasion. He started by topping his opponent’s phenomenal first-serve performance with his own whopping 82% rate in the final set (he was at 65% and 66% in the first two). Shapovalov, for his part, kept up his end of the bargain by not letting up on his serves, getting 77% of them in. Mix in the fact that both stayed in single digits in the unforced-error count and you can understand why the spectators who stayed past midnight at Grandstand, as well as the viewers who patiently remained in front of their screens, probably felt rewarded with a five-star final set featuring two extraordinary shot-makers.

It was only fitting that the match extended to a final-set tiebreaker in which, again fittingly, one player had to outplay the other to grab the decisive lead. Shapovalov broke through by the tiniest of margins when he nailed a dazzling forehand winner down-the-line on the run to grab the mini-break and lead 5-3. He closed the curtain two points later with, what else, a 1-2 punch forehand winner. He will face the American Frances Tiafoe on Thursday in the quarterfinals.

I am not a proponent of youngsters going to bed past midnight on weekdays, but if any junior tennis enthusiast decided to break the house rules for this particular match and watched it until the end, I am inclined to believe that they went to bed deeply inspired by a couple of impressive ball strikers not much older than they are.

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