By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday May 20, 2021
Photo Credit: Alexandre Hergott / Open Parc
Italy’s Jannik Sinner has been a player on the rise for the last three seasons. But on Thursday at the Open Parc Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes in Lyon, it was the serve that dragged him down. The 19-year-old fell to lucky loser Arthur Rinderknech of France, 6-7(7), 6-2, 7-5 and afterward was hard on himself in press.
"He was serving well, I was playing for sure not my best chances, I had a lot of chances especially in the third set, but I don't want to take anything away from his performance because he served well and from the baseline he played quite strong and I couldn't do many things, for sure the serve was today, was completely a disaster,” he said. “My performance today, my level today was very, very low, and for sure disappointed about it."
Sinner’s record drops to 20-10 with a title on the season. He hasn’t had the best clay season, but the news isn’t all bad for the highest-ranked teenager on tour. He enters the week at a career-best ranking of 17 in the world despite a 7-5 record on clay in 2021. He’ll head to Roland-Garros in the next few days, where he was a quarterfinalist last year.
"For sure we let this loss today behind, then we to practice. Maybe I will take one or two days off because after Roland-Garros I go immediately to grass and then it's still long, after two days off,” he said, adding: "We came here to play some matches, but it ended up like this and we accept that."
If there is one area that Sinner could improve upon statistically, it is his percentage of service games won. He has won just 79 percent of his service games entering the week, which makes him one of just three players in the Top 20 that have won less than 80 percent of service games.
He seems keenly aware that he’ll have to be better behind his serve going forward.
"He played for sure well, and you know when I somehow turned it around in the first set, I tried to stay aggressive immediately," he said. "In the third set I tried to stay there, which I have done at the end of the day, but my serve today was completely a disaster, as I said, it's difficult to win a match even if you try your best, even on the baseline I didn't feel that comfortable. But he deserved it today, because he played better than me, he served better than me and the groundstrokes were better than mine so nothing to take away from him."
After a day of upsets that saw Sinner and top-seeded Dominic Thiem go down, as well as third-seeded Diego Schwartzman, the draw opens up significantly ahead of Friday’s quarterfinals.
Here’s how the last eight shape up: