Top seed Roger Federer exited the last tournament of the ATP regular season in disappointing style, with a 3-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-4 second-round loss to Frenchman Julien Benneteau on Wednesday at the Paris Masters.
The Swiss, who was beaten in the Sunday final of his home event in Basel by
Novak Djokovic, lost in an opening match in Paris for the third time and first since 2002.
Federer failed to get over the line with his 60th win of the season, instead going into the World Tour Finals this month in London standing 59-10.
“I can definitely play much better, but I can also play much worse. It wasn't a bad performance,” he said. “Julien went out and got the victory. I definitely had chances; I missed them.”
Benneteau, ranked 49th, fell to the court and could not not hold back tears at his second-round accomplishment in front of a home public. He next gets an all-French challenge against Gael Monfils after the 15th seed beat qualifier David Guez 6-4, 7-5.
The upset took just under two hours with Federer's 14 aces counting for little against the charged-up local.
Bhupathi, Paes crash out of Paris Masters
The Indian challenge in the ATP Paris Masters ended after Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes, along with their respective partners, crashed out of the doubles event following unexpected second-round defeats.
Bhupathi and Bahamian Mark Knowles lost 4-6 7-6 (6) 7-10 to the Swede-Australian combination of Simon Aspelin and Paul Hanley.
Paes and his Czech partner Lukas Dlouhy also went down, losing 7-6 (5) 4-6 5-10 to the Australian-American pair of Jordan Kerr and Travis Parrott.
Somdev, Prakash out of knoxville singles
New Delhi: Somdev Devvarman went down in the first round of the ATP Challenger event in Knoxville after he was beaten 6-7 (8) 3-6 by unseeded Croat Roko Karanusic.
Prakash Amritraj also made an exit as he lost 3-6 2-6 to South African Izak Van der Merwe in the first round.
But Somdev won in the doubles as he and compatriot Purav Raja beat local wildcard entrants Cory Parry and Todd Paul 6-4 7-6(3) in the first round.
Prakash and his American partner Kevin Kim lost 2-6 3-6 to Davey Sandgren of America and John-Patrick Smith of Australia.