Dancevic ousted from Olympics
Canadian tennis hopeful loses to Wawrinka in three sets
Frank Dancevic’s whirlwind tour of Beijing is over, just four days after he arrived as a last-minute replacement in the men’s singles tennis draw.
The Niagara Falls tennis star and Canada’s top-ranked men’s singles player lost his first-round Olympic match Monday.
Ninth-seeded Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland defeated the 23-year-old Canadian in three sets. Wawrinka, also 23, won the match 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, according to live scoring from the International Tennis Federation’s website. The sport’s governing body is the organizer of the tennis tournament at the 2008 games.
Wawrinka and Dancevic, ranked 114 in the ATP's standings, played nearly two hours, starting at 1:30 p.m., on court 8 at the Olympic Tennis Centre in Beijing.
Dancevic won the first set. He and Wawrinka were tied 3-3 in the first, when Dancevic went up two games. He closed out the first set 6-4.
Wawrinka came back, taking the second set 6-3. He and Dancevic traded games in the second frame until the eighth game when Wawrinka broke Dancevic’s serve to take a 5-3 lead, then closed out the second set.
In the third set, Dancevic and Wawrinka traded games until Wawrinka jumped out to a two-game lead, 3-1. Dancevic would take one more game, but the rest of the third set and match belonged to Wawrinka.
Wawrinka is expected to face the winner of the first-round match between Jurgen Melzer of Austria and Brazilian Marcos Daniel. Their match was scheduled to be played immediately after the Dancevic-Wawrinka contest.
Dancevic is Canada’s top-seeded men’s singles player. He was a last-minute replacement in Beijing after a German player withdrew last week from the singles draw. Sixty-four players started the tournament. After the first round, 32 advance.
Canada doesn’t have anyone left in the men’s singles draw, after the country’s other hopeful Frederic Neimeyer lost to Guillermo Canas of Argentina.
