Stefanos Tsitsipas walked off the court in Munich on Wednesday after another first-round defeat that highlighted how far the former world number three has drifted from the sport\u2019s elite amid injury \u200bproblems and inconsistent form.<\/p>\n
Resuming at 2-2 in the deciding set against Fabian Marozsan after \u200cplay was suspended on Tuesday due to darkness, the 27-year-old Greek crashed out 3-6 7-6(5) 6-4 in a defeat that will see his ranking slide into the 70s, his lowest in eight years.<\/p>\n
Tsitsipas, who decided to play in Munich \u200bthis year instead of his usual tour stop in Barcelona, knows that the more his \u200branking slides the tougher his opponents will be in the early stages of \u2060tournaments.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m aware that I might need to play good players in earlier rounds at different tournaments \u200bthis year,\u201d he told Tennis TV ahead of the ATP 500 tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not an easy thing to \u200bget to play them early, but I also accept the challenge and I accept my current position and state, that these things need to happen in order for me to get back to where I belong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tsitsipas showed plenty of \u200bpotential when he broke through eight years ago but since reaching the finals of the French \u200bOpen in 2021 and Australian Open in 2023 he has struggled to deliver a sustained run of form.<\/p>\n
A niggling \u200cback injury \u2060derailed the second half of his 2025 campaign and while he began this year saying his goal was just to feel competitive again, his only decent run came in Doha where he reached the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
Questions have been asked about his professionalism, with Goran Ivanisevic, who coached him in 2025, saying after \u200bthe Greek\u2019s first-round exit \u200bat Wimbledon last year \u2060that he had not seen a more \u201cunprepared player\u201d in his life.<\/p>\n
Before Munich, Tsitsipas said he would consider playing more ATP 250 tournaments to regain his \u200brhythm. The Geneva Open is the only tournament at that level ahead of \u200bRoland Garros, which \u2060begins on May 24.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a player that needs matches, I\u2019m a player that needs to play a lot of sets to feel my game better, and this is something I might need to do in \u2060the next \u200bcouple of weeks,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m expecting to play a lot \u200bof tournaments, I want to get a lot of tournaments under my belt, but of course be careful where I choose \u200bmy tournaments and when I get to play.\u201d [Reuters]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stefanos Tsitsipas walked off the court in Munich on Wednesday after another first-round defeat that highlighted how far…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,18693,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-610120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-stefanos-tsitsipas","12":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610120","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=610120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}