{"id":146910,"date":"2018-01-17T02:03:06","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T07:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=146910"},"modified":"2018-01-17T02:03:06","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T07:03:06","slug":"canadas-shapovalov-falls-to-tsonga-in-second-round-of-australian-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/17\/canadas-shapovalov-falls-to-tsonga-in-second-round-of-australian-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada’s Shapovalov falls to Tsonga in second round of Australian Open"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FILE:<\/a>
FILE: Denis Shapovalov (Photo: Marianne Bevis\/Flickr,CC BY-ND 2.0)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MELBOURNE, Australia \u2014 Denis Shapovalov was eliminated in the second round of the Australian Open on Wednesday after falling 6-3, 3-6, 6-1, 6-7 (4), 5-7 to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.<\/p>\n

Tsonga will next face either Australia’s Nick Kyrgios or Viktor Troicki of Serbia, who played later Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The Frenchman won the match in three hours 37 minutes. He smashed nine aces and converted on 3-of-8 break points.<\/p>\n

The 18-year-old from Richmond Hill, Ont., was making his Australian Open debut \u2014 the first major of the year.<\/p>\n

Shapovalov got out to a good start and had an early break in the first set to go up 3-1. He finished the opening set with five winners.<\/p>\n

Tsonga rallied in the second and went ahead 4-2 after breaking Shapovalov.<\/p>\n

The third set was all Shapovalov with him jumping out to a 3-0 set advantage before cruising to the set victory. Shapovalov, ranked No. 50 in the world, had 11 winners and two aces in the set.<\/p>\n

Tsonga, the No. 15 seed, jumped ahead early in the fourth set tiebreak and forced a decisive fifth set.<\/p>\n

Shapovalov looked in control in the fifth set with an early break to go up 2-0. He had a chance to close out the match on serve at 5-3, but was broken by Tsonga.<\/p>\n

The Frenchman won five straight games in the fifth to complete the victory.<\/p>\n

Shapovalov won the only prior matchup between the two men during the second round of last year’s U.S. Open at Flushing Meadows.<\/p>\n

The Canadian had defeated Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-1, 6-3, 7-6 (5) of Greece in the Australia Open’s first round.<\/p>\n

Shapovalov rocketed up the ATP standings last year, starting at No. 250 and reaching a career-best No. 49 over the summer.<\/p>\n

He reached the semifinals of the Rogers Cup in Montreal in August, becoming the youngest semifinalist at a Masters 1,000 event, then followed that up by reaching the fourth round of the U.S. Open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MELBOURNE, Australia \u2014 Denis Shapovalov was eliminated in the second round of the Australian Open on Wednesday after falling 6-3, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":115826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[13737,20808,23719],"class_list":["post-146910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-australian-open","tag-denis-shapovalov","tag-jo-wilfried-tsonga","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}