@SportsHorn
A year ago, a 17-year old Canadian was lifting the Junior Boys’ Wimbledon title on Centre Court. Fast forward to 2017 and the same Canadian, now 18, was on Court 7 playing his first main draw Grand Slam singles match as a Professional. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the same result. Shapovalov played well but was unable to execute during several big moments and fell to unseeded Jerzy Janowicz 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7-2) in the First Round.
Shapovalov, who was born in Tel Aviv Israel but moved to Canada before he was even a year old, showed flashes of brilliance especially from the backhand side but was unable to knock out the former 2013 Wimbledon semi-finalist. With his trademark oversized cap, Shapovalov was broken just once in the opening set, that coming in the fifth game after a double fault. Janowicz, 8 years older and 8 inches taller than his opponent, started off strong never facing a break point and he went six for six on points at the net winning the set in just 31 minutes.
In the second, Shapovalov began to settle in. He continued to serve well and his one handed backhand executed several good looking winners. The style of his backhand is somewhat Federer or Wawrinka-like but from the opposite side. A crosscourt winner gave him a break to go up 4-2 and he held the rest of the way to even up the match.
In the third, Shapovalov had three chances to break in the opening game but Janowicz was able to hang on. In the third game, things got interesting as Janowicz, who is known to have a bit of a temper, got into it with the chair umpire over a line call. Shortly thereafter, it was the young Canadian who also took issue with a call as well. A Janowicz groundstroke was called in on the baseline on a game point but Shapovalov saw it the other way. He disagreed with the chair umpire saying the ball was at least a “foot” out. The umpire, said he didn’t see it that way and said the ball was good. Shapovalov continued to argue and then Janowicz looked at his opponent and told him that the ball was good. Even at 18, Shapovalov shut down his opponent saying “Dude, don’t talk to me right now.” Janowicz clinched the set with a nice drop shot-lob combination and moved ahead.
In the fourth set, the players both held serve throughout. They both won over 84 percent of their first service points during the match. A tiebreak was needed and Janowicz dominated it from the start after his opponent shanked an overhead smash on the first point. After two hours and 25 minutes it was Janowicz who would move on.
Speaking to Canadian media outlet TSN after the match, Shapovalov said of the incident “There was no reason for him to say anything. He was complaining about a lot of line calls which I thought were correct. I didn’t see why he needed to step in in that situation. He had nothing to do with the conversation.”
Shapovalov finished with 20 aces, the most by anyone in a first round match on Monday. He was only able to convert 1 of 9 break opportunities.
Janowicz, who’s ranked No. 141 in the world, won just his fourth match of the year. He also avenged a semi-final loss to Shapovalov at a Challenger event in Mexico earlier this year.
