Shanghai qualifying: Atmane retires again, Tomic about to serve out the match

On Monday on Show Court 3, in the first round of Shanghai Masters qualifying, Terence Atmane had the match where he wanted it: one set all against Bernard Tomic, then 2-1 with a break in hand in the third. The Australian pulled the break back and broke him in the eighth game. At 5-3, Tomic stood ready to serve for the match. Atmane walked to the net to shake his hand: retirement, with illness the reason given to the chair umpire.

L’Équipe’s headline speaks of a racket thrown towards the crowd; the article sits behind its paywall, and the gesture appears in neither of the other two match reports, in which We Love Tennis and TennisTemple describe only a player walking to the net to shake hands. That detail still needs confirming. The rest is established: Atmane left this match before its end, six days after leaving another one.

A pattern that repeats around the 2h15 mark

La Voix du Nord, which has followed the story closely, counts five retirements in two seasons and notes that his breakdowns almost always come after about two hours fifteen of play. After the US Open, his tests showed unusually high CPK levels.

• Jingshan, 30 September: retired at 5-5 in the third set against Elias Ymer, after 2h18, having served for the match;
• US Open: cramping against Jaume Munar;
• Madrid, in April: cramping against Ugo Humbert.

“We keep looking”

The medical trail moves slowly. “He has had about 80% of the tests requested and, for now, we cannot find exactly what he has. […] A doctor even mentioned the idea of a kidney problem. We keep looking,” his father Stéphane told Eurosport. The ranking tells the same story in numbers: 52nd three months ago, 99th on Monday morning in Shanghai. After Jingshan the reaction on social media was already blunt: “No fight, no fair play, impossible to defend that,” wrote the Avantage Tennis account.

What it changes for the bet

Before the match, the market made Atmane favourite at 1.35 with Betway against the world No. 184, and the straight-sets finish at 1.44 with Unibet. The match went to a third set and ended in a retirement. Backing Atmane in a long match today means betting that this collapse will not come this time: in two seasons, it has come five times. Tomic now waits for Skatov or Sakellaridis for a place in the main draw. 18+. Only bet what you can afford to lose.