After a 2025 season marked by a climb up the world rankings and two ATP titles, Canadian Denis Shapovalov opened 2026 with a loss Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The 23rd-ranked Shapovalov, of Richmond Hill, Ont., fell in straight sets, 6-4, 6-2, to Belgium\u2019s Rapha\u00ebl Collignon in the first round of the Brisbane International.<\/p>\n
Shapovalov, who dropped as low as 140th in 2024 after a knee injury, was the sixth seed at the ATP 250 hard-court event, while Collignon came through qualifying.<\/p>\n
It was the first meeting between the two players.<\/p>\n
Shapovalov landed 54 per cent of his first serves, hit three aces and committed three double faults, while giving Collignon 12 break-point chances, three of which he converted.<\/p>\n
Leylah Fernandez, of Laval, Que., is scheduled to play her first match of 2026 on Tuesday against Ukrainian Dayana Yastremska. Fernandez is seeded 13th in Brisbane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a 2025 season marked by a climb up the world rankings and two ATP titles, Canadian Denis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-392618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}