Montreal’s Félix Auger-Aliassime suffered elimination in his first match of the Madrid Tennis Open on Saturday, losing in three sets of 2-6, 6-3, 6-7 (5) against Serbian Dusan Lajovic, in a second-round duel.
In the decisive tiebreaker, Auger-Aliassime found himself in serious trouble, when he conceded the first five points to his rival, including two on his own serve.
Facing a 2-6 loss in the break — and four match points — Auger-Aliassime managed to narrow Lajovic’s lead to 6-5. The Serb however put an end to the duel, played by closed roof at the Arantxa-Sanchez stadium, while he hit a forehand out of reach of the Montrealer.
Auger-Aliassime had already had to save two match points in the 12e game of the decisive set, each time after committing double faults. He saved the first with a forehand winner in the cross-country, and the second with one of his 12 aces. Lajovic still signed a third victory in as many games against Auger-Aliassime.
“It was super tight at the end,” analyzed the 32-year-old Serb. “To win 7-6 in the third set is really good for my confidence,” added Lajovic, who will face Germany’s Jan-Lennard Struff in the next round.
Auger-Aliassime isn’t the only top-10 player to lose to Lajovic lately. In fact, the latter scored a third consecutive victory in similar circumstances, after he overthrew world number one Novak Djokovic and defeated Russian Andrey Rublev en route to the title at the Banju Luka tournament last week.
The ninth player in the world and seventh seed in the tournament, Auger-Aliassime is the third Canadian to be eliminated in the second round in the last two days, after Eugenie Bouchard and Bianca Andreescu on Friday.
Denis Shapovalov will look to turn the tide later on Saturday when he takes on China’s Zhang Zhizhen.
Moreover, Auger-Aliassime remains active in doubles, along with Shapovalov. On Friday, Auger-Aliassime and Shapovalov defeated Colombians Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah 7-6 (5), 7-6 (2) in the first round of men’s doubles.
On their next outing, the two Canadians will battle Finland’s Harri Heliovaara and Britain’s Lloyd Glasspool.
A bad start
For Auger-Aliassime, the opening points of the decisive tiebreaker looked a lot like his start to the game.
The Montrealer was broken in his first two service games and Lajovic built a comfortable 4-0 lead. The Serb completed the first set in just over 30 minutes without facing a single break point.
In that opening round, Auger-Aliassime scored no aces, double-faulted twice and hit just 55 percent of his first serves. He also lost eight out of nine points when he had to use his second serve.
More efficient in serving in the second set, as shown by his success rate of 72 percent in first serves, Auger-Aliassime was offered a first break chance in the second game, which he failed to exploit. . However, he recovered four games later and his break took him to a third and decisive set.
As in the first set, Auger-Aliassime was unable to get a chance to break Lajovic’s serve in this decisive set.