{"id":24454,"date":"2020-02-23T14:39:36","date_gmt":"2020-02-23T19:39:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordontennis.com\/?p=24454"},"modified":"2020-02-23T14:39:36","modified_gmt":"2020-02-23T19:39:36","slug":"five-finals-lost-auger-aliassime-more-to-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2020\/02\/23\/five-finals-lost-auger-aliassime-more-to-come\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Finals Lost for Felix Auger-Aliassime But Many More to Come"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Felix Auger-Aliassime played his fifth tour-level championship match today against <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordontennis.com\/2020\/02\/22\/stefanos-tsitsipas-focus-key-success\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Stefanos Tsitsipas<\/a> and for the fifth time failed to win a set, losing to the defending champion in 88 minutes. But disappointing though his 3-6 4-6 defeat was, the Canadian has reasons to be positive. After all, of active players, only Andy Murray (five), Novak Djokovic (seven) and Rafael Nadal (18), reached more finals as a teenager, which is not bad company for Auger-Aliassime to find himself in.<\/p>\n<p>And he still has time to improve on his record in finals as a teenager, with his 20<sup>th<\/sup> birthday some months away on August 8<sup>th<\/sup>. Nor is he alone in having struggled to get over the line in finals. Cedric Pioline, once ranked as high as 5<sup>th<\/sup> in the world, lost his first nine title-matches, whilst Julien Benneteau, who cracked the world\u2019s top 25, lost all ten of the tour-level finals he played in singles, although he won 12 doubles titles, including the 2014 French Open.<\/p>\n<p>And there is no doubt that Auger-Aliassime is continuing to improve, with a top-ten ranking looming on the horizon. The Canadian said of Tsitsipas after his defeat: \u201cit&#8217;s getting harder and harder to play against you&#8221;. The Greek has now tied the head-to-head between the two youngsters at 2-2. Tsitsipas replied that his rivalry with Auger-Aliassime is making him a better player.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the pressure will on the Canadian will mount up with every lost final, but one has to remember how big of an achievement just reaching five finals as a teenager is. Roger Federer, for example, reached only four finals before his 20<sup>th<\/sup> birthday, although he did win the title at the Milan Indoors in 2001. Nonetheless, there is far from any cause for concern surrounding Auger-Aliassime. He may not have won a title yet, but it surely a matter of when not if he lifts his first title.<\/p>\n<p>Main photo:<br \/>\n<a id=\"tLpEHYjISZpRNDfCDN1QIg\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/detail\/1202804330\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'tLpEHYjISZpRNDfCDN1QIg',sig:'f_51NTGncqYNOCpdi4YEuImfGsIQPxH6iAxqfLO1RYM=',w:'594px',h:'384px',items:'1202804330',caption: true ,tld:'co.uk',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Felix Auger-Aliassime played his fifth tour-level championship match today against Stefanos Tsitsipas and for the fifth time failed to win a set, losing to the defending champion in 88 minutes. But disappointing though his 3-6 4-6 defeat was, the Canadian has reasons to be positive. After all, of active players, only Andy Murray (five), Novak [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2968,"featured_media":24471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[4726,11025,11026,1219,10987,304,11027,11012],"class_list":["post-24454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp","category-featured","tag-atp-marseille","tag-auger-aliassime-marseille","tag-faa","tag-felix-auger-aliassime","tag-open-13","tag-stefanos-tsitsipas","tag-tsitsipas-auger-aliassime","tag-tsitsipas-marseille"],"modified_by":"Jim Smith","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2968"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}