SHANGHAI, China (AP)—Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France beat an error-prone Feliciano Lopez 7-6 (4), 6-3 Monday in the opening round of the Shanghai Masters for his first win since returning from a three-month injury layoff.
Both players held serve throughout the first set before Tsonga took control of the tiebreaker with two aces and a backhand passing shot. He clinched the set with a forehand winner that skidded off the line.
The 12th-seeded Tsonga earned the only break of the match in the second set and sealed the win when the Spaniard hit a backhand wide. Tsonga lost in the first round of the Tokyo Open last week, his first tournament since injuring his knee in a quarterfinal loss to Andy Murray at Wimbledon.
“When you don’t play for two or three months, you lose your tennis,” Tsonga said. “When you come back, you start (from) zero. So for me, it was really important to win my first match and today, I did it.”
Ninth-seeded Fernando Verdasco was eliminated after wasting two set points to fall 7-6 (4), 7-5 to Thiemo de Bakker of the Netherlands.
Both players held serve throughout the first set before de Bakker capitalized on four straight errors by Verdasco to win the tiebreaker.
Verdasco came back in the second set, using his powerful forehand to break de Bakker in the fourth game and take a 5-2 lead. The Dutchman faced two set points on his next service game but saved both—one with a lob over Verdasco that dropped right on the baseline—and won the next five games to close out the match.
Jurgen Melzer of Austria, seeded 13th, overcame a tough challenge to beat 279th-ranked wild card Yang Tsung-hua of Taiwan 6-4, 7-6 (5). Yang had seven aces to Melzer’s three, but the Austrian broke his 19-year-old opponent three times.
Also, Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain beat Eduardo Schwank of Argentina 6-7 (8), 6-2, 6-4, Jeremy Chardy of France ousted Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus 7-6 (4), 6-1, and Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland defeated Gilles Simon of France 6-4, 6-1.
Wawrinka sets up a second-round meeting with No. 1-ranked Rafael Nadal, who received an opening-round bye along with all the top eight seeds at the $3.24 million tournament.