TheSportsCampus

It was a day of shocks and upsets at The Aegon Championship in London as 9 seeded players including the top seed faltered today. However, 2nd Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and 3rd seed Janko Tipsarevic survived whirlwind Wednesday to keep their title challenge alive.

The biggest upset of the day was definitely the departure of top seeded Briton Andy Murray as he was defeated by Frenchman Nicolas Mahut, who was immortalized for that marathon Wimbledon match against John Isner. The match experienced some fierce battle between the giant and the giant-killer as both the 2nd and 3rd sets were decided by tie-breakers and it was Mahut, who kept his cool at the end to take the match 6-3, 6-7, 7-6.

In another match, 4th seeded Frenchman Gilles Simon was defeated by Italian Simone Bolelli in 3 sets. It was a bad day on court for Simon as errors flew from his racquet with unerring frequency. Simon, who recently dropped a place in ATP rankings after a disappointing clay court season, like Murray fell in a final set tiebreak, 4-6, 6-3, 7-6.

Former Wimbledon runner-up and 7th seed Andy Roddick, who is on a comeback from injury, also faced a major setback to his Wimbledon preparation with 4-6, 6-4, 5-7 defeat to Edouard Roger-Vasselin of France. Roddick sent down as many as 22 aces, but failed to convert his break point opportunities, which led to the defeat.

In stark contrast to the above results, 2nd seeded French gladiator Jo-Wilfried Tsonga scored a comfortable 6-3, 6-2 victory over Jamie Baker. 3rd seeded Serb Janko Tipsarevic also won his bout against Ryan Sweeting 6-1, 7-6. Tsonga will now face Ivan Dodig whereas Tipsarevic will take on Yen-Hsun Yu in their respective 3rd round matches. There were also wins today for 6th seed Marin Cilic and veteran Argentine David Nalbandian.

Among the other seeded players, 11th seeded Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis lost to Czech Lukas Rosol 3-6, 6-4, 4-6 while 13th seeded Alex Bogomolov was defeated by Xavier Malisse 3-6, 6-4, 0-6. 14th seeded Gilles Muller lost to Grigor Dimitrov 6-7, 4-6 and 15th seeded Japanese Go Soeda was shown the door by Dodig 3-6, 6-7.

Select Scores:

E.Roger-Vasselin (FRA) def. A.Roddick (USA) [7]  6-4 4-6 7-5
N.Mahut (FRA) def. A.Murray (GBR) [1]  6-3 6-7(4) 7-6(1)
J.Tsonga (FRA) [2] def. J.Baker (GBR)  6-3 6-2
J.Tipsarevic (SRB) [3] def. R.Sweeting (USA)  6-1 7-6(2)
S.Bolelli (ITA) def. G.Simon (FRA) [4]  4-6 6-3 7-6(2)
F.Lopez (ESP) [5] def. S.Darcis (BEL)  6-3 3-6 7-5
L.Rosol (CZE) def. M.Baghdatis (CYP) [11]  6-3 4-6 6-4
D.Nalbandian (ARG) [10] def. R.Bemelmans (BEL)  6-4 6-2
M.Cilic (CRO) [6] def. M.Ebden (AUS)  6-2 6-1