The early
days of the Shanghai Open saw the elimination of 7 seeded players, including
Holger Rune,
Alexander Zverev, and
Alex de Minaur.
Surprises
are common in tournaments, but it's rare to see so many favorites eliminated so
early, considering that only half of the second-round matches have been played.
In the
bottom half of the draw, 14 out of 16 matches have already been contested, and
in half of them, a seeded player was defeated. Perhaps the biggest surprise was
world No. 3 Holger Rune, who was thoroughly outplayed by world No. 122 Brandon
Nakashima, suffering a 6-0, 6-2 defeat, which was the most one-sided loss of
Rune's career.
The second
top-10 player to fall in the first round was world No. 9 Alexander Zverev, who
had previously won the Chengdu Open and reached the semifinals of the China
Open in the past two weeks. This time, Roman Safiulin dashed Zverev's hopes
with a convincing 6-3, 6-1 victory, avenging his recent loss to Zverev in the
Chengdu final.
Three more
players within the top 20 also made early exits, with Alex de Minaur (11th)
falling to Fabian Marozsan (6-3, 7-5), Felix Auger-Aliassime (14th) losing to
Marton Fucsovics (7-6, 4-6, 6-3), and Lorenzo Musetti (17th) being defeated by
qualifier Yu-hsiou Hsu (6-3, 6-4).
Additionally,
the 23rd seed Tallon Griekspoor retired from his match against Dusan Lajovic
when he was trailing 4-6, 2-3. The 28th seed Tomas Etcheverry also failed to
secure a victory against a spirited Zhizhen Zhang (world No. 60), the only
Chinese player still in the competition.
As a
result, only one of the third-round matches in the bottom half of the draw will
feature a showdown between two seeded players, with Casper Ruud (8th) facing
Christopher Eubanks (29th).
However,
there are still two matches to be played in this part of the draw, with Jannik
Sinner (6th) looking to continue his streak against Marcos Giron, and Daniil
Medvedev (2nd) facing off against Chilean Christian Garin.