It was as much the manner of the defeat than the loss itself.

Defending champion Valentin Vacherot was very disappointed in the way he crashed out of the third round of the Rolex Shanghai Masters.

Returning to the venue of his career highlight 12 months ago, the Monegasque never got into Monday night’s match against American Tommy Paul, winning just six games.

“It’s why I’m really disappointed. I would rather leave this tournament with a big match, a good fight, I don’t know, three sets or something, not just losing 6-4, 6-2,” he said.

“But in tennis you cannot control everything, and especially you cannot control when your opponent is playing really good, like tonight. Of course, next year I’ll be as pleased coming back here as I was this year.”

Vacherot said that he felt less than 100 per cent physically coming into the match, but also paid credit to Paul for his polished performance from start to finish.

“I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been on the road for so long or anything, but tonight was probably one of my worst matches of the season. But also Tommy made me play bad. He moved me around pretty well.

“I wasn’t really great. I saw pretty quickly that I wasn’t feeling it physically also. All that together, I mean, I tried. I fought in the first set, came back. I was returning well. It was one of the few things that I was doing great today.

“I had the break point to get back at 5-1 in the first set, and I think once I didn’t get that one, he also got confident and played a really, really good second set.”

Vacherot came into the tournament at a career-high No. 14 in the PIF ATP Rankings but has dropped to No. 32 in the Live rankings.