It was a day for sightseeing in St. Petersburg as Tomas Berdych and Milos Raonic took time away from the St. Petersburg Open to visit the iconic St. Isaac cathedral on Tuesday. The duo were joined by Raonic’s girlfriend Danielle Knudson to take a tour of one of the city’s most picturesque landmarks, as well as a climb up a private staircase to the Balustrade where 12 bronze angels overlook St. Petersburg.

“I think it’s pretty special,” said Raonic, who will open his title defence in the Russian city against 2004 champion Mikhail Youzhny in the second round. “You can see most of fantastic cultural icons, monuments here in St. Petersburg. From this point atop St. Isaac’s Church, you can see everything and you really get to see how big St. Petersburg is, which sometimes you can really forget if you are driving a car. To climb to the Top of St Isaac’s Cathedral today was simply phenomenal.”

“It was really interesting to get a tour and to go downstairs to see all the cathedral and to get so much information,” said Berdych. “It’s a beautiful part of the city, so it was really interesting.

“The city is full of history and old architecture part and many other things as well. I’m coming from Prague, which is also a very historical city, so it’s always nice to see different parts of the city, the cathedral, the palaces and the stuff like this.” 

Though both players stand 6’5” tall, Berdych and Raonic admitted fighting their fear of heights in order to enjoy the vantage point. “I’m not the biggest fan of the heights. I’m afraid of that,” the Czech said. “I always managed with myself to see, because the view is really beautiful and something different when you can see the city from above.” 

“I’m not very good with heights,” the Canadian said. “The CN Tower in Toronto has to be the tallest place I’ve been to. I try to stay away of heights. Luckily, this structure has been around for over 600 years. So I definitely feel safe here.”

Berdych, the third seed, will face Andrey Kuznetsov in his opening match in the second round.

The best stretch of Paolo Lorenzi’s career continued on Tuesday at the St. Petersburg Open. The 34-year-old Italian saved two match points to outlast German qualifier Mischa Zverev 3-6, 7-6(6), 6-0 in two hours and six minutes to move into the second round at the Sibur Arena.

Earlier this month at the US Open, Lorenzi reached the third round and took a set off World No. 2 Andy Murray. In July, the Rome native became the oldest first-time winner in ATP World Tour history by winning the Generali Open in Kitzbuhel at the age of 34 years, seven months (d. Basilashvili).

Read What Lorenzi Had To Say After His First ATP World Tour Title

Lorenzi, who’s playing a career high No. 35 in the Emirates ATP Rankings, will face French qualifier Alexandre Sidorenko in the second round. The 28-year-old Paris resident upset sixth seed Albert Ramos-Vinolas of Spain 7-5, 6-2. Sidorenko, No. 255 in the Emirates ATP Rankings, had not played a tour-level match this season.

Serbian Dusan Lajovic gained the edge in his FedEx ATP Head2Head series against Spaniard Fernando Verdasco with a 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory. The 26-year-old Belgrade native won 74 per cent of his service points and now leads their series 2-1. Lajovic will meet either countryman Viktor Troicki, the seventh seed, or Portugal’s Gastao Elias in the second round.

Russian qualifier Daniil Medvedev also advanced. The 20 year old beat 19-year-old compatriot Alexander Bublik 6-4, 6-0 in 60 minutes. Medvedev will next face fifth seed Alexander Zverev.

The last time Stan Wawrinka played in St. Petersburg, he lost in a final. It was August 2004, and Wawrinka, then 19 years old and No. 159 in the Emirates ATP Rankings, fell to Jean-Rene Lisnard 3-6, 7-5, 7-5.

Since then, much has changed for Wawrinka. Namely, the Swiss No. 1 hardly loses in finals anymore. Wawrinka is 11-0 in his past 11 finals, including his US Open victory against Novak Djokovic earlier this month.

As the top seed at the St. Petersburg Open this week, the 31-year-old Wawrinka will try to make it 12 final victories in a row. “I have to make it to the final first,” he said during his pre-tournament press conference. “I hope to win more. So far I have achieved some impressive results.”

Wawrinka has had to beat some of the game’s best to win titles during the past few years. He’s beaten Djokovic twice, the other time at the 2015 Roland Garros, when Wawrinka earned his second Grand Slam tournament title. “Stanimal”, as Roger Federer nicknamed him in 2014, has also dispatched of Rafael Nadal, Federer, Tomas Berdych and Marin Cilic, to name a few others. “Hopefully I can win more,” Wawrinka said.

In St. Petersburg, as Wawrinka has done in the past, he credited his coach, former ATP World Tour player Magnus Norman, for some of his success. Wawrinka also said his years of experience have helped. “Sometimes you get to your best tennis really a bit later, not when you’re 20 years old,” he said. “That’s my career… finally I could order all the pieces together and that’s why I am now playing my best tennis.”

Wawrinka chose to return to St. Petersburg this week partly because it had been so long. The allure of something new made the destination tempting.

“Every year you play almost the same calendar, the same tournaments. Some tournaments I have played 10 years in a row,” Wawrinka said. “When you have the chance to be in a new tournament, in a new city, you will always see something different, something nice to see.”

Wawrinka will open his stay with a familiar opponent. The top seed plays Czech Lukas Rosol in the second round. Wawrinka leads their FedEx ATP Head2Head series 5-0, including three wins this season. Their closest contest was at Roland Garros earlier this season, when the 6’5” Rosol pushed Wawrinka to five sets.

“Really tough opponent,” Wawrinka said. “I expect a tough one, that’s for sure.”

Dustin Brown, now at a career-high No. 68 in the Emirates ATP Rankings, continued his good form with a 6-4, 6-2 win over Paul-Henri Mathieu on Tuesday at the Moselle Open. The German, fresh off a runner-up finish at the ATP Challenger event in Szczecin, fired 15 aces and capitalised on four of his six break point chances to advance to the second round in Metz. Brown will next face Julien Benneteau for the first time.

French qualifier Vincent Millot upset compatriot and seventh seed Benoit Paire 6-4, 6-3, while fellow qualifiers Peter Gojowczyk and Nikoloz Basilashvili were also victorious over Nicolas Almagro and Gregoire Barrere respectively. The German Gojowczyk will next face top seed Dominic Thiem, while Basilashvili will challenge Gilles Muller in the second round.

Guillermo Garcia-Lopez needed one hour and 38 minutes to top Damir Dzumhur 5-7, 6-2, 6-1 and set a second-round clash with fourth seed Gilles Simon. The Frenchman leads their FedEx ATP Head2Head 5-0.

In doubles, Gero Kretschmer/Jan-Lennard Struff defeated Ken Skupski/Neal Skupski 1-6, 7-5, 10-6 for a quarter-final meeting with second seeds Oliver Marach/Fabrice Martin. Nicholas Monroe/Artem Sitak beat Julian Knowle/Andreas Seppi 6-2, 5-7, 10-6 and Colin Fleming/Scott Lipsky came from a set down to beat the Austrian wild card team of Jurgen Melzer/Dominic Thiem 4-6, 7-6(5), 10-8.

Defending champion Milos Raonic returns to the St. Petersburg Open this week to defend his title and with an eye on the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, 13-20 November at The O2 in London.

Raonic is currently No. 4 in the Emirates ATP Race To London standings. But the Canadian is trying unseat No. 3 Stan Wawrinka. Raonic currently has 4,420 points, 400 behind Wawrinka’s 4,820. Japanese Kei Nishikori remains close to the No. 3 spot as well. He’s in fifth place, only 105 points behind Raonic.

Who Else Is Ahead Of Raonic? View The Emirates ATP Race To London Standings

“Part of me takes pride in winning this tournament again and there is also an aim to move higher in the [Emirates] ATP Race [To London] as there is a fight for the world’s No. 3 position,” Raonic said during his pre-tournament press conference. “So there is even more motivation for myself.”

(Player positions in the calendar-year Emirates ATP Race To London and the 52-week Emirates ATP Rankings will effectively align on 7 November, when the regular ATP World Tour season concludes after the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris.)

The 25 year old is trying to reach the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals for the second time. He also qualified for the year-end championships in 2014 (l. to Federer, l. to Murray). A title defence in St. Petersburg would considerably help his standing. The St. Petersburg Open champion will receive 250 Emirates ATP Rankings points.

Raonic has successfully defended titles two times in his career. He won his first ATP World Tour title at San Jose in 2011 and defended it in 2012 and 2013. He also has had plenty of success indoors. Five of Raonic’s eight ATP World Tour titles have come on indoor hard courts, including the three San Jose crowns. The St. Petersburg Open will be held this week at the Sibur Arena.

“I had a great experience at this tournament,” he said of his time at the St. Petersburg Open last year. “I think it was fabulously run, and I saw the people involved in the tournament, they really care about it.”

Raonic will have to beat some of the game’s best players if he wants to repeat in St. Pete. The Canadian is the second seed. Opposite him on the top half of the draw awaits Wawrinka, fresh off his US Open title. Another Top 10 player, World No. 9 Tomas Berdych, is the third seed.

“I’m just focused on who I’m going to play,” said Raonic, who will face either Serbian Janko Tipsarevic or 2004 champion Mikhail Youzhny of Russia in the second round.

Raonic will also be going for his second title of the season. He beat Roger Federer to win the Brisbane International presented by Suncorp in January. The Monte-Carlo resident finished runner-up at the BNP Paribas Open, an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournament in Indian Wells (l. to Djokovic), the Aegon Championships at The Queen’s Club and at Wimbledon (l. to Murray in both).

But it won’t be all tennis this week for Raonic. Outside the Sibur Arena, he plans to enjoy what else St. Petersburg offers.

“We’re going to St. Isaac’s Cathedral tomorrow, then we also are due to visit the Church of Our Savior On the Spilled Blood, and I’d like to come back to the Hermitage Museum because the last time I was there I had only three hours and just ran through it,” Raonic said. “So I definitely need to commit more time to have a full experience of the Hermitage Museum.”

Don’t let the evenness of 15-15 fool you. It is a statistical green light for the server to play aggressively and employ first-strike tactics to get ahead in the game.

An Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers analysis of the current Top 10 players in the Emirates ATP Rankings reveals a positive environment for them to play bigger and seek shorter points by delivering more firepower at the start of the point.

Check Out The Game’s Best Servers In The ATP Stats LEADERBOARDS

Top 10 of the Emirates ATP Rankings: Holding Percentages

Score 15-15, Hold Serve Percentage: 84
The Top 10 players in the Emirates ATP Rankings hold serve 85 per cent of the time, according to Infosys Information Platform. With the score at 15-15, their hold-serve percentage drops only one percentage point, to 84, nearly identical to the opening point of the game.

Fifteen-all delivers a high win percentage that mentally puts the server in the driver’s seat, letting him unleash a few potential tactics, including a bigger first serve down the centre of the court if he’s chasing an ace or a serve out wide in search of a forehand return error.

Score 30-15, Hold Serve Percentage: 93
With relatively little scoreboard pressure on the server at 15-15, the opportunity to stretch the lead to 30-15 is forefront in the tactical plan. If the server reaches 30-15, they will hold serve on average more than nine times out of 10. There is nothing not to like about that scoreboard situation.

Score 15-30, Hold Serve Percentage: 64
A server’s likelihood of holding shifts 29 percentage points when the scoreline changes from 30-15 to 15-30. There is always a statistical consequence of losing a point, but this really isn’t so bad. If the server loses the point at 15-15, he is still likely going to hold serve two out of three times. Proficient servers like Milos Raonic and Roger Federer still manage to hold about 70 per cent of the time from 15-30, while World No. 1 Novak Djokovic holds 67 per cent of the time.

Summary
At 15-15, the server is looking for a shorter point to fully maximise the effects of the first serve, not letting the returner prolong the point into a more even battle. A serve, aggressive serve +1 forehand and a finishing volley is about as good as it gets strategically at this specific point in a game.