Canadian pair Philip Bester, Adil Shamasdin knock Novak Djokovic out of Rogers Cup doubles

TORONTO — Having two No. 1 ranked players — one former, one current — on the other side of the net with a combined 20 Grand Slam titles between them might be considered intimidating to some tennis players. But Canadian Philip Bester didn’t see it that way.

“Obviously, it's an exciting match up — kind of like a popcorn match,” Bester said. “But at the end of the day, you know, putting aside the excitement, I was also excited to go out there with Adil and I knew that we had enough skill and enough game to beat these guys.”

These guys happened to be top-ranked Novak Djokovic and Nenad Zimonjic, a former doubles No. 1, and Bester and his partner Adil Shamasdin did in fact beat them, 7-5, 4-6, 10-2 in their first-round match at the Rogers Cup on Tuesday.

“Going into a match like this we are focused on what we are doing on our end, and we are not really kind of worried about what they're going to do,” Shamasdin said in their post-match press conference. “They are going to have some great shots. (Djokovic) hit some good shots; he hit some bad shots, just like everybody else.”

“Personally, for me, it was just another tennis player on the other side of the net, you know, between the same line dimensions as any other tennis court,” Bester added about Djokovic.

Doubles, after all, is a “different animal” than singles, as Bester put it, with an emphasis on speed and touch at the net versus the baseline battles Djokovic typically engages in when he’s flying solo.

“There is going to be certain things that he does very well in singles, but doesn't really necessarily transfer on to the doubles court,” Shamasdin said of Djokovic. “I felt like he felt a little bit slow at the net. So I think we kind of targeted that a little bit early."

After the Canadian pair won the first set 7-5 in front of a crowded Grandstand court, the match remained on serve in the second until the tenth game. With Djokovic-Zimonjic leading 5-4, Bester was serving to keep his team in the set. At 30-30, he double faulted. On the ensuing break point, he double faulted again to hand the Serbian team the 6-4 set win, sending the affair to 10-point match tiebreak.

“Well, first off I wanted to keep things interesting for the crowd,” Bester joked afterward when asked about the deflating end to the second set.

“You know what? That's just sport. That's tennis. That kind of stuff happens. Not just to me. It happens to everybody,” he said. “As soon as we went to the changeover, the most important thing for me personally was to have a short memory about it and also to communicate with Adil that I was ready to move on to the tiebreaker."

The Canadian team did indeed put the poor service game behind them and came out firing in the breaker. On the first point, Shamasdin hit a backhand return winner down-the-line, and the pair never looked back from there. On match point, leading 9-2, Bester’s return clipped the net and sailed over the heads of both Djokovic and Zimonjic, landing well inside the court.

The victory was actually the first time either player won a match — in singles or doubles — at the Rogers Cup in 13 tries. Shamasdin and Bester had previously partnered up twice before at the Canadian event without much success — until now, that is. After the long-awaited win, Bester said “it's nice to get that monkey off the back.”

“Obviously I think it means a lot to both of us. It's always hard to play at home. You know, you want to do well here,” Bester said. “We're not just here to win one match and make some headlines that we beat a former No. 1 doubles and the current singles No. 1 in the world."