Felix Auger-Aliassime hasn't had a strong year so far, and it continued at the 2023 Cincinnati Masters with another loss and early exit.
The Canadian hasn't won back-to-back matches since March. That's five months of play, and while he missed some tournaments, we're still talking about nine tournaments overall and a player who posted 64 wins last year on the ATP Tour.
He's only at 15 this year, and 12 of those came before April 1st. Since then Auger-Aliassime won only three matches while losing eight. The 8th came today against Adrien Mannarino at the Cincinnati Masters in straight sets.
It wasn't an excellent performance from Auger-Aliassime, which is a shame because he put forward a pretty decent one against Matteo Berretitni in the previous round. Mannarino is such a tricky player to play, especially for a player battling a lack of confidence. He recently admitted that he's feeling fine after the injury struggles but the doubt is clearly visible during play.
The first set was very close as the Canadian left early break points on the table. Mannarino started playing better as the match went on and eventually broke to take the opening set 6-4. The story was all too familiar for the youngster - an abundance of errors.
He had 9 unforced errors, four of which were doubles faults. He didn't have a single ace, and that's a big problem, considering how important the serve is to his game. The second set saw Mannarno take an early lead once more though Auger-Aliassime would break back a few games after that. He would drop his serve immediately after that for another heartbreaking loss.
The French player did what he needed to do to win the match 6-4, 6-4. He didn't serve well (44 % first serve), but he thoroughly outplayed Auger-Aliassime from the baseline posting a stat line of 19 winners and 14 unforced errors. Very shaky play from the Canadian, who defends 1560 points (62 % of his point total) in the final month of the season.
If he keeps playing like this he'll drop significantly.
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