A Wimbledon campaign that began with such promise for Alex de Minaur has ended in despair with the Australian star ousted in straight sets in London on Monday.
A sloppy service game late in the first set and a disastrous stretch midway through the second on a hot day proved costly as the No. 5 seed fell to Italian Flavio Cobolli 7-5 7-6 (4) 6-3 in 2hr 43min.
When beaten at Roland Garros a month ago by Jakub Mensik, de Minaur lamented the fact he had coughed up an opportunity to make a deep run with Carlos Alcaraz absent through injury and Jannik Sinner ousted by a meltdown in the Paris heat.
Sinner is alive at Wimbledon and so, too, is seven-time champion Novak Djokovic. But with those champions on the other side of the draw, there was a significant opportunity for de Minaur at the All England Club to make a mark.
But entering the second week with a draw considered open enough to make his best grand slam run, the 27-year-old was instead brought undone by an inform opponent and a familiar crutch that proved particularly costly.
De Minaur created plenty of opportunities against the 10th ranked Cobolli when breaking his rival on four occasions and had ample opportunities to further his prospects in the match.
But the serve he has worked so hard to strengthen throughout his career ultimately betrayed him when it mattered most in all three sets in a dispiriting end after a bright opening week, with the Aussie landing just 50 per cent of his first serves.
There is no disgrace in falling to Cobolli, who was a finalist in the French Open a month ago and took a set off Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon last year.
But the Australian, a former boys’ finalist at Wimbledon, has stronger grass court credentials and will be dismayed at his inability to hold his nerve deep in the first and second sets.
Although the scoreline was straight sets, the match on Court 1 was extremely tight, but it is indisputable that Cobolli played the big moments with more balance and verve, with his willingness to attack a feature that ultimately split the pair.
The first real trouble for de Minaur came when serving at 5-all in the opening set. He dropped to 0-40 on serve with three unforced errors only to save those break points before Cobolli secured a pivotal game when forcing a backhand mistake.
The Aussie started the second set slowly when broken in the third game but after a delay midway through the set when a patron fell ill, he seized control when reeling off four straight games against Cobolli to move to a 5-2 lead.
But from being in a dominant position, de Minaur coughed up to the opportunity to level the match when losing 11 points in succession, though admittedly his rival produced some big moments in the run to level the set at 5-all.
In the tiebreaker Cobolli was the superior player against de Minaur, a seven-time grand slam quarterfinalist, with a couple of forehand winners from the Italian from 3-all enabling him to move to a strong position.
When the Aussie broke to start the third set, there were some hopes he might be able to regain some momentum and launch a spirited comeback.
But a couple of backhand errors gifted his rival a break back before two double-faults when serving at 3-4 in the third set sapped the disappointed Australian of any hopes of producing a miracle comeback.