Stefanos Tsitsipas was denied a chance to close out his second-round match in Gstaad on Wednesday night. He was up against wildcard Jerome Kym and was halted by the tournament’s strict rule against playing on once natural light fades. Like most clay-court facilities on the European summer swing, Roy Emerson Arena has no backup floodlighting. So, if the sun sets on a live match, it must await dawn. 

When the match stopped, the pair were deadlocked at 6-4, 6-7(2), 5-5, just two games away from deciding a place in the quarterfinals. Tsitsipas had not faced a single break point in the entire game till that point. 

Play restarts Thursday after 2 pm local time at Roy Emerson Arena; both players have a rare overnight break to process a set that could determine the match’s outcome. The former world No.3 is looking for his first back-to-back wins since the fourth-round result at Madrid back in April. The stretch underlines the lack of form the 27-year-old is going through.

Kym, ranked 186th in the world, played a farewell doubles match with Stan Wawrinka on July 13th. The duo lost in the first round against Marcelo Demoliner and Robert Galloway in straight sets. He kick-started his singles campaign the next day, winning his first round match against fellow compatriot Dylan Dietrich in three sets. The Swiss reached his first-ever ATP Tour quarter-final at this very event last year, and he is clearly eyeing a repeat on home soil against out-of-form Tsitsipas. 

However, Tsitsipas made a notable change in his team a few days back to give his career a much-needed push.

Tsitsipas turns to Patrick Mouratoglou to reverse a career in freefall

Stefanos Tsitsipas arrived in Gstaad with a ranking as low as 88th in the world, down 54 positions from where he was at the start of the season. He has yet to win a title since the Dubai Tennis Championships in February 2025. On the eve of Wimbledon, he confirmed his coaching separation from his father, Apostolos. His father has guided him for almost his entire career, and their partnership has seen its fair share of breakdowns and patching up before.

“The older I get, the more difficult it is for me to maintain a stable relationship with my father,” Tsitsipas said. “I believe that my father needs other things, just as I need different things. Having my father by my side brings me comfort, but it is not the solution for me to take the next steps.”

In his place, Tsitsipas recruited a long-time member of Patrick Mouratoglou’s coaching staff, Thomas Perrin, who will lead the coaching unit as Mouratoglou takes on a supervisory role, rather than a full-time coaching tour stint. 

The Frenchman, who guided Serena Williams to ten of her Grand Slam titles, was blunt about why he agreed to get involved. “The relationship I have with Steph for so many years is really strong; he’s someone who is very important for me, and I think he’s not where he belongs at the moment in terms of ranking and results,” Mouratoglou said, while acknowledging the limits of an advisory role. 

“There are a lot of things I cannot see because I’m not here to see them, so I trust Thomas’ eyes and his feedback to get the information that I don’t get directly.”

The downfall this partnership is trying to reverse has been steep and prolonged. Tsitsipas qualified for two Grand Slam finals at the 2021 French Open and 2023 Australian Open, and showed immense promise before the era of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. The 27-year-old has watched the two players redraw the ceiling of men’s tennis while his own results took a hit. After the second-round Wimbledon exit, it marked the eighth straight major appearance without progressing beyond the round of 64. 

Mouratoglou himself had sounded doubtful about a Grand Slam breakthrough as recently as last year, saying it was “difficult to believe” Tsitsipas could win a major given the gap to the sport’s top two. With his ranking at its lowest since 2018,  this three-set grind against Kym is precisely the type of incremental improvement the new team is looking forward to.