BASEL. Basel’s Thursday night took the two names the Swiss Indoors was built around and sent both of them home. Jerome Kym, a Swiss wild card ranked 222, beat top seed Ben Shelton 6-3, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (1). Jan-Lennard Struff then beat Novak Djokovic 6-7 (4), 7-5, 7-6 (5), with 27 aces, in 2 hours and 36 minutes. It was Struff’s first win in nine meetings. It was Djokovic’s earliest exit in Basel.
Djokovic had not played the Swiss Indoors since 2011. In 2009 he won it, in 2010 he reached the final, in 2011 the semi-finals. He arrived this week as a 24-time major champion, ranked 12, and he did not reach the quarter-finals. He is 39. Struff is 36 and ranked 47. The German had lost the first eight, and he had dropped only one set in those eight. On Thursday he saved all six break points he faced.
One way to play it
“I knew I needed to go for it. There was only one way to play it,” Struff said afterwards. The last serve, his 27th ace, went into the corner. “The last eight times he beat me very, very easily. So I am very, very happy.” He took the racquet out of Djokovic’s hand with the serve and with first-strike tennis, and he did it in a match that still went to a third-set tie-break. Djokovic won the first set. He could not take another. At one stage he was in an animated talk with his coach, Viktor Troicki. It did not produce the break he needed.
The result also bruises the race to Turin. Rafael Jodar, ninth in the live standings, had lost earlier in the day, which had opened a door: a title in Basel could have pushed Djokovic past him. Instead Djokovic trails the Spaniard by 319 points, with the Paris Masters the last event before the Nitto ATP Finals for both. Djokovic is level with Roger Federer on 18 qualifications for the season finale. A place this year now depends on Paris, not on the city where Federer’s tournament is played.
The Swiss result that landed first
Kym’s win was the one a home crowd will keep. Shelton was the top seed and was chasing an eighth career title. He lost a wild card in the night session, a player outside the top 200 who took the first set 6-3, dropped the second in a tie-break, and closed the third 7-6 (1). For a tournament that sells itself on the stars, a Swiss winner against the first seed is the story that does not need explaining in the city.
Struff plays Nuno Borges on Friday evening. Borges, ranked 53, beat the Basel junior Mika Brunold in the first round. Shelton and Djokovic are already on the way out. The quarter-finals will not look like the poster. They will look like the two matches Thursday actually produced.