Holder Stan Wawrinka was sensationally dumped out of the Dubai Tennis Championships on Tuesday as his form collapsed following an early 4-1 lead.
The Swiss three-time Grand Slam winner was beaten 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 in the first round by outsider Damir Dzumhur.
Wawrinka was playing for the first time since suffering a right knee injury at the Australian Open a month ago, where he reached his eighth major semi-final before falling to Roger Federer.
And following defeat by the 77th-ranked journeyman from Bosnia-Herzegovina, he admitted that his fitness was lacking after only a week of practice.
“I started well but it was tough because I was missing a little bit something. In practice it was starting to be OK the last few days, but today I was missing something.”
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Dzumhur made the most of his Dubai debut to advance into a match with Marcel Granollers of Spain. The loss was the third from 10 matches this season for Wawrinka.
{{/usCountry}}Dzumhur made the most of his Dubai debut to advance into a match with Marcel Granollers of Spain. The loss was the third from 10 matches this season for Wawrinka.
{{/usCountry}}After taking an early lead, Wawrinka found his game slipping. By the time he got the the first-set tiebreak, he was playing catch-up.
The second seed was broken twice for 5-1 in the second set before a brief rally in which he broke back once.
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Despite his exit, Wawrinka said that his knee was giving him no pain, a positive sign heading into back-to-back Masters 1000 events starting next week in Indian Wells and Miami.
“I need to focus on myself. I need to practise more, to get in (a) better level to expect to do some good results,” Wawrinka said.
“I’m quite unhappy to lose first round. It’s tough, because I played well last year here. I was happy to be back. I was happy to be back on the ATP Tour after a month.
“I was excited and I wanted to do better this week. But the result is not there, but I think in general it’s positive for my tennis.”
Elsewhere in the first round, Evgeny Donskoy beat fellow Russian Mikhail Youzhny 6-4, 6-4 to set up a match with Federer.
Spain’s Fernando Verdasco defeated Andreas Seppi of Italy 6-2, 7-5.