Djokovic close to ominous best
FRESH START: FORMER WORLD NO 1 GETTING INTO GEAR Serb made Nadal work hard for his win in Rome semifinal.
Far from being a fading force, 12-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic has shown signs he is emerging from the toughest spell of his career and is ready for a fresh start ahead of next week’s French Open.
The 31-year-old will be seeded at around 20 in Paris, but there will be a few players anxiously hoping the 2016 champion is not in their sights.
Last week in Rome Djokovic went toe-to-toe with a rampant Rafael Nadal and though he lost the semifinal 7-6 6-3, the quality he produced in an absorbing contest was closer to what we have come to expect from the Serb.
If they are in opposite halves of the draw it would not be too much of a stretch of the imagination to imagine the same duo battling for the Roland Garros title on June 10.
“He’s coming back for sure, if it wasn’t the French Open I think you would have to put him up among the seven or eight favourites,” said three-time champion Mats Wilander, who will follow Djokovic’s progress as part of the Eurosport coverage team.
“Even at the French, (he has a chance), he played very well against Nadal in Rome. Obviously it’s easier to play when you have nothing to lose and everything to win in one way, but technically he is back where he was, or very close.”
A few months ago Djokovic could barely register a win.
His return from the elbow injury that ended his 2017 season after Wimbledon and then flared up again at the Australian Open was more difficult than expected.
At Indian Wells, in his first match after losing to Chung Hyeon in the fourth round of the Australian Open, he slumped to defeat against 109th-ranked Japanese Taro Daniel.
“It felt like first match I ever played on the tour. Very weird,” was his post-match reaction, admitting that he was battling himself physically and mentally.
When he lost to Frenchman Benoit Paire in the Miami first round a week later he said it was “impossible” to play the kind of tennis that made him all but untouchable in 2015 when he was so close to a calendar year Slam.
He and coach Andre Agassi split two months ago and in April parted company with another staff member in Radek Stepanek.
Since then Djokovic has found salvation in Slovak Marian Vajda, the coach who launched him on the path to greatness and was his right-hand man from 2006/17 before taking a back seat. – Reuters