Ball drops from pocket: Tsitsipas beats Fritz after bizarre finish in Shanghai
Stefanos Tsitsipas came from a set down to beat Taylor Fritz 3-6, 7-5, 6-3. Two points in the final game had to be replayed – and Fritz showed sportsmanship.
Archive image · Photo: Skyscraper2010 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Stefanos Tsitsipas is into the last 16 of the Shanghai Masters. The Greek beat 11th seed Taylor Fritz of the US 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 in two hours and 13 minutes on Monday. According to the ATP it was his seventh win over a top-20 player this year, and he now leads Fritz 5-2 in their head-to-head.
The finish was unusual: with Tsitsipas leading 5-2 in the third set, a ball fell out of Fritz's pocket during the rally on two consecutive points, and both were replayed. On the second occasion Tsitsipas had missed a match point before Fritz himself called the let. The Greek finally converted his fourth match point. "I was manifesting today's match and trying to put myself in a victorious situation," he told the ATP.
In the last 16 Tsitsipas meets the winner of fifth seed Daniil Medvedev and qualifier Dalibor Svrcina. Against Medvedev he expects "a physical match", he said, according to Tennis Temple. Tsitsipas reached the Shanghai semi-finals in 2019.