Jannik Sinner and
Felix Auger-Aliassime are both out of the National Bank Open in Toronto after unexpected losses.
Sinner arrived in Canada in strong form after winning his biggest event to date at the Citi Open in Washington. However, that endeavour left him rather drained physically and the Italian entered today's match against Duckworth slowly. The Italian lost his serve early and the Australian never looked back.
Duckworth was very solid from the start serving well enough to keep Sinner at bay. With the Italian, a step slow in rallies Duckworth was able to win the first set with 6-3 and the 2nd set with 6-4 completing the major upset.
Another shocking upset came a bit later as Auger-Aliassime got beaten by
Dusan Lajovic. The Canadian enjoyed somewhat of a resurgence at Wimbledon where he put forward several good performances. However, he reverted to poor form in Tokyo and last week in Washington.
Lajovic is not a good hard court player and the Serbian was having a very poor season so far. Luckily for him, he ran into another abysmal performance of Auger-Aliassime whose 2021 has been extremely poor. He was once again too erratic from the baseline overshooting the court several times and committing cheap errors.
In the end the Serbian was able to win the match 7-5 6-4 sending the native Canadian home early.