A slamming first serve ball (18 aces), powerful forehand accelerations from the heyday and a newfound consistency in the backhand diagonal: Stan Wawrinka delivered his best sets of the season at the Masters 1000 in Shanghai. But after two hours of fighting, the 39-year-old Vaudois experienced a slight fatal drop in power in the face of the enthusiasm of Flavio Cobolli (22 years old). He finally lost 7-6 6-7 6-3 in the round of 16.
Four days – the program was turned upside down due to the rain – after his very convincing performance in the 1st round against the French server Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, “Stan The Man” proved that confidence was slowly returning at the end of the season. Impeccable on serve, he went for the first set in the deciding game, not without saving two set points in front of one of the revelations of 2024.
Having gone from 100th to 30th place in the world since January, Flavio Cobolli is one of the representatives of the new wave of Italian tennis. The semi-finalist of the last Geneva Open had to wait 5-5 to get his first break points in a 2nd set which he ended up pocketing in the tie-break. And as Cobolli is the best performing player in decisive sets this season (17-9), things suddenly became complicated for “Stanimal”.
However, we regret that Wawrinka was the victim of an error at the start of the last round. At 0-1, he had armed a winning service but after the next point, the referee indicated 00-30… A few rallies later, he was broken and never came back despite three break points at 2-4. The 236th player in the world therefore misses his meeting with Novak Djokovic on Tuesday. We should see him again in Stockholm next week before the Swiss Indoors in Basel.
Related News :