A COUPLE of big exits haunted the men’s Round of 32, following suit with the women’s draw, as seeds continue to fall to lower ranked opposition.

Stefanos Tsitsipas came back with a vengeance to claim a 6-3 6-4 victory over Frances Tiafoe, putting his Wimbledon exit at the hands of the United States representative to the backburner, to overcome the American in 77 minutes. Winning 28 of 31 first serve points, Tsitsipas controlled proceedings and fired 13 winners and nine aces to take out the win.

“There was [a different feel], yeah,” Tsitsipas said. “I enjoyed playing under the closed roof. The court kind of felt quicker, but that didn’t stop me from playing the game I wanted to play.”

“I’m always trying to find to find solutions, find ways to fix my mistakes and get a better outcome – that was the case today,” Tsitsipas explained. “I was able to maintain the high levels of concentration and deliver good tennis in moments where I had to. It was a very-well balanced game, mentally.”

It was seventh seed Hubert Hurkacz and 11th seed Aslan Karatsev that fell at the second hurdle, both going down in tough three-setters despite clinching back the second set apiece. While Karatsev went down to 68th-ranked Frenchman Jeremy Chardy, for Brit Liam Broady, it was a huge victory over Hurkacz as the world number 143 claimed a monumental 7-5 3-6 6-3 win, outlasting Hurkacz’s 16 aces and hitting 18 winners for 16 unforced errors to Hurkacz’s 28.

“It’s obviously a career-best win at a career-high moment, representing GB at the Olympics. It couldn’t have gone better,” Broady said.

“I think it helped watching Hubert a lot over the last few years – I watched him a lot last night. The team put together a few clips for me of him playing against lefties, to sort of get a rough idea of how he plays, and that helped a lot with being more comfortable out there.

“It’s quite a difficult situation for him – he probably has no idea how I play. No fault of his own, obviously, just not many people watch the Challengers.

“I don’t think anyone expects very much of me and that works well for me. Over the last year and a half, I’ve started to put a few results together and started to build stable foundations within my tennis off the court, and that’s starting to pay off this year.”

Meanwhile 14th seed Ugo Humbert joined Chardy on the winners list with a tough three-set victory over Marcos Giron, as both Kei Nishikori and Ilya Ivashka earned three-set wins over fellow unseeded opposition. Eighth seed Diego Schwartzman and 12th seed Karen Khachanov took out the remaining two Round of 16 spots with straight sets wins over Tomas Machac and James Duckworth, respectively.

OLYMPICS ROUND OF 32 RESULTS:

[3] Stefanos Tsitsipas (GRE) defeated Frances Tiafoe (USA) 6-3 6-4
Liam Broady (GBR) defeated [7] Hubert Hurkacz (POL) 7-5 3-6 6-3
[8] Diego Schwartzman (ARG) defeated Tomas Machac (CZE) 6-4 7-5
Jeremy Chardy (FRA) defeated [11] Aslan Karatsev (ROC) 7-5 4-6 6-3
[12] Karen Khachanov (ROC) defeated James Duckworth (AUS) 7-5 6-1
[14] Ugo Humbert (FRA) defeated Miomir Kecmanovic (SRB) 4-6 7-6 7-5
Kei Nishikori (JPN) defeated Marcos Giron (USA) 7-6 3-6 6-1
Ilya Ivashka (BLR) defeated Mikhail Kukushkin (KAZ) 6-7 6-3 6-3

Picture credit: Kopatsch/Sato/Sidorjak