Denis Shapovalov and Stefanos Tsitsipas were looking forward to winning their first title on tour with the participation to 2 ATP250 events back to back. That didn’t work well.

Shapovalov

Denis had a rather ugly experience last week in St. Petersburg where he lost a “done match” against Klizan in the quarters after the Canadian was leading an extremely smooth contest 6-3 5-3 (the final result was 3-6 7-5 6-3 for the Slovakian).

Things got similarly bad this week in Shenzhen against the world no.171 Yoshihito Nishioka. In fact, after losing the opener at the tiebreak, Denis won the second set 6-3 and he was leading 5-3 in the decider. However, he wasn’t able to convert a couple of match points in the 9^th game and eventually he dropped 4 consecutive games to lose 7-6 (5) 3-6 7-5.

Tsitsipas

Stefanos is also not having fun on tour. In fact, after his memorable run in Toronto where he lost in the final, the Greek has a horrible 1-4 win/loss record. Seeded no.2 in Metz and Shenzhen, he lost in the opener on both occasions. In China, he had to bow to the world no.67 Pierre-Hugues Herbert (6-3 7-6) after a sloppy performance.

Next step for both: Tokyo.