It’s been a rotten 15 days in the professional life of Stefanos Tsitsipas, and no mistake. A couple of weekends back, he surrendered a two-set advantage to Novak Djokovic in the final at Roland-Garros; and on the opening day of Wimbledon 2021 the Greek crashed out to America’s Frances Tiafoe.
Having never beaten a top five opponent in 11 previous attempts, Tiafoe splendidly belied his world ranking of 56 to shock the No.3 seed 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 in just 122 minutes.
“That sounds pretty damn good!” the 23-year-old Tiafoe told the BBC in his post-match on-court interview.
“This is definitely one of my best performances. From start to finish it was pretty clean. If you want to play against the best in the world, in the best atmosphere in the world, this is what you train for and what it’s all about.
"I live for these kind of moments. I love this, playing in front of you guys. It feels unbelievable to hear a crowd like this again – you guys are great. From early on, you guys were really behind me. I was having fun with it and saw a ton of smiles. I’m glad you enjoyed it, because I definitely did.
“I’m not even close to where I want to be [as a player]. I’ve had a lot of great achievements but I haven’t even scratched the surface. I’m very capable – obviously today showed it. Today was big. A guy of his level, he’s going to do a lot of great things, win a ton of Grand Slams… but not today.”
Tsitsipas himself wondered out loud if he should have played a warm-up tournament, before adding: “There have been times when I have been much more motivated than this. The bubble makes it really tiring week by week.
"It's very difficult when you know mentally you're going to go from one bubble, being in that bubble two and a half weeks, maybe like close to a month. Just like two weeks later you still have to undergo the same procedure and the same thing again.
"It's just not easy. But I don't want to put emphasis to that too much. My opponent played significantly better than me. There wasn't the drive that I was hoping for. There wasn't that same fighting spirit that I usually put out on the court.”
The roof on No.1 Court was closed, but Tiafoe raised it with a display of confident authority. Having won the Nottingham Challenger earlier this month and reached the quarter-finals at Queen’s, he had banked plenty of time on grass coming into this match – and it showed equally that Tsitsipas’s last match on grass was two years ago, when he also lost in the first round here.
That one, against Thomas Fabbiano, went the distance, but against Tiafoe he could make no lasting impression, despite frequently getting more first serves in, winning more points off those first serves, and delivering more aces.
Before the 2021 Championships began, Tsitsipas put that Fabbiano defeat down to an absence of Plan B or C; but those plans once more escaped him against Tiafoe. He earned break points, but could not convert them.
By contrast Tiafoe largely kept his cool in testing moments, rolling his shoulders between points like a prizefighter, utterly at ease and approaching the net without fear.
In the first set he even played what might end up as the shot of The Championships, recovering from a delicious Tsitsipas lob by swatting a forehand which somehow landed in.
A nerve-jangling second set felt like the key chapter, as it seemed whoever took it would have the momentum to move on to the victory. At 4-4 a zinger of a return earned Tiafoe a chance to break, and a point later he was bellowing his satisfaction when Tsitsipas overcooked a backhand off another deep return.
In the third chapter Tiafoe broke immediately, and although Tsitsipas made him fight harder to hold his serve, the American did just that.
Maybe there was something about the tale of this match in the demeanour of the two players as they waited to go on court. Tsitsipas picked absent-mindedly at his fingernails, while Tiafoe prowled the corridor with intent.
At the time it looked like relaxation in the Greek and tension in the American, but a different story unfolded. Tsitsipas opened with a loose service game and never recovered, either in that set or, it transpired, the entire match.
Always self-contained, he gave little away in his body language when his mistakes betrayed him, whereas the story of every point was writ large in Tiafoe’s response each time, much to the delight of the crowd.
His back story is one of the most interesting in tennis. Tiafoe’s parents emigrated from Sierra Leone in 1996 and his father was Head of Maintenance at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in Maryland, where Frances and his twin brother Franklin trained.
In his professional life, he made the third round here in 2018, and pierced the top 30 after reaching the last eight at the Australian Open the following year. His current run of form may rank as his most satisfying since.
"I woke up this morning like, yeah, I'm beating Stefanos. It happened. These matches… it's not I have to, it's that I get to. I get to compete against a guy 3, 4 in the world, whatever he is, No.1 Court at Wimbledon. These are honours. These aren't chores", he said in his post-match press conference.
This was always a potentially tricky hurdle for Tsitsipas, but still his 40th win of the season was the likely outcome. Yet having reached at least the semi-finals of his last three Grand Slams, and the quarter-finals at 10 of his most recent 11 tournaments, it’s all over for him on Day One at Wimbledon 2021.
