Ireland’s Conor Gannon beat former Wimbledon quarter-finalist Bernard Tomic 6-7, 6-4, 7-6 in the Dublin Challenger in the tournament’s biggest upset so far.<\/p>\n
Over the course of nearly three hours the Irish No. 3 went toe-to-toe with the former top 20 player. Ahead of the match-up there was a rankings difference of nearly 900 places between the two with Gannon at 1,085th and Tomic at 192nd.<\/p>\n
Tomic’s experience was at the forefront in the first set as he relied on his serve and forced Gannon into errors. Despite the pressure, Gannon did manage to hold on for a tie-break but after missing a few points it was Tomic who eventually took the first set.<\/p>\n
Gannon managed to push on from there though and didn’t let Tomic get a foothold on the match in the second set. His net skills were on display and he looked to utilise his backhand slice. After knocking on the door a number of times, Gannon made the crucial break at 5-4 to level the match and give the boisterous crowd a decider.<\/p>\n
With the match on the line, the third set was tense as the crowd wondered if Gannon’s home advantage or Tomic’s experience would get them across the line. It was the latter who broke first and held on with his own serve.<\/p>\n
Gannon wasn’t deterred though and matched this by holding his serve and then breaking to bring things level at 2-2. This ended up being the story of the set as Tomic rallied again to bring it to 5-3 and leaving things looking the worse for wear for Ireland’s No. 3.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old finished with a flash though and learned from his earlier experience of the set being decided by a tie-break. Gannon looked the fresher as he rushed to a 5-0 lead. His serve at 6-1 saw a missed return from Tomic and a brilliant result for Irish tennis.<\/p>\n
Gannon’s reward is the opportunity to take on the week\u2019s star attraction in the round of 16, the former world number three and 2017 ATP Finals winner, Grigor Dimitrov.<\/p>\n
Ireland’s No. 2 Peter Buldorini lost 4-6, 2-6 earlier on Tuesday to Dutchman Mees Rottgering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland’s Conor Gannon beat former Wimbledon quarter-finalist Bernard Tomic 6-7, 6-4, 7-6 in the Dublin Challenger in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-741937","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\/741937","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=741937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}