A Ball Fell From Fritz's Pocket Twice, and Tsitsipas Had to Earn Match Point Again

Tennis players carry a spare ball in a pocket for the second serve, and almost nobody thinks about it again. Taylor Fritz had to think about it twice in two points, at 2-5 down in a deciding set, with his Shanghai Masters on the line. Stefanos Tsitsipas beat the 11th seed 3-6 7-5 6-3 on Monday to reach the fourth round, The Sporting Base reports, and the finish turned on the loose ball twice, a video review, and a match point that had to be won twice.

What happened on the two points?

At 30-30, with Fritz serving to stay in the match, a ball fell out of his pocket during a rally after he hit a forehand down the line, TennisUpToDate reports. The point stopped in confusion: Fritz was unsure whether the ball had come from his own pocket, the umpire’s question was whether his let call had hampered either player, and a video review followed. TennisUpToDate reports the review showed the let was called after Fritz had struck the ball, so the point stood, which brought up match point. The ATP account carried by The Sporting Base describes both points as replayed, so the two reports differ on that first ruling, and agree on everything after it. On the next point, at match point, it happened again: a ball came out of Fritz’s pocket during the point, Tsitsipas’s forehand went wide, and this time the point was replayed instead of standing as a Fritz point, because Fritz acknowledged the ball was his. Shanghai has had a fortnight of officials deciding matches in unusual ways, from Bergs’s nine-minute toilet break that drew no warning against Alcaraz to the practice-court row that followed Alexander Zverev around the site, and this was the third kind of case: the rule working, but only after the player it hurt most spoke up.

Why could Fritz not simply keep the match point he had won?

Because a point cannot stand on a hindrance the winner caused. Tsitsipas’s forehand missed, and in an ordinary rally that is the end of it. But the loose ball rolling out of Fritz’s pocket during the point is a disruption of Fritz’s own making, and the honest call, which Fritz made himself, was that the point had not been played clean. The Sporting Base notes he called the let on himself, acknowledging the ball had fallen before the point was decided. That detail is the reason the story travelled further than a routine replayed point. The server, facing match point, trailing in a match he was losing, handed back a point he had already banked. Tennis has no VAR culture of players correcting calls in their opponent’s favour at match point down, and the clip Tennis TV posted of the sequence was captioned, accurately, as bizarre scenes.

How did Tsitsipas close it out after that?

Slowly, which was the risk. A replayed match point is a small theft of momentum, and Tsitsipas then missed three match points in the same game as Fritz held serve to extend the match to 5-3, The Sporting Base reports. The Greek had to go back to his own service game and finish the job there, which he did, winning at the fifth time of asking, SuperSport reports. The full match took two hours and 13 minutes, and the comeback underneath the odd finish was substantial: Tsitsipas lost the first set with little impact on Fritz’s serve, broke late in a second set of 11 straight holds to level it, and broke twice in the third before the pocket took over the story. It continues a season that has quietly rebuilt his standing, much like Bublik’s run through Shanghai has survived its own chaos, a smashed racket and a cut hand included.

What does the win say about Tsitsipas’s year?

That the recovery is real, and measurable. The win was his seventh over a top-20 player in 2026, The Sporting Base reports, in a category where he recorded none at all in 2025 while a back injury broke up his season. He ended a 16-month title drought in Gstaad in July, and Shanghai is his second Masters 1000 fourth round of the year. His head-to-head against Fritz now stands at 5-2, and his own account afterwards was that he had to raise his level before the doors opened. The context of the week sharpens it: this is the tournament where Bergs’s win over Alcaraz settled the year-end No. 1 race for Zverev, and the draw’s second week is being shaped by players the rankings had half-forgotten.

What happens next?

A fourth-round meeting with Daniil Medvedev, who beat qualifier Dalibor Svrcina 6-2 6-3 and has now won twice in a row since his China Open disqualification. Medvedev beat Tsitsipas in the 2019 Shanghai semi-finals, the Greek’s best run at this event, and leads their rivalry, so the match carries its own history. For Fritz, the exit leaves the pocket question hanging in a practical sense: players change balls and routines constantly at this level, and a spare ball that will not stay put on the two biggest points of a match is the kind of small equipment failure that gets fixed by the next round or not at all. He did not get a next round. What he got was credit, from the coverage and from the clip, for the call he made against himself.