Novak seeks to turn up heat in California
Five-time champion Novak Djokovic will be out to reassert his dominance on the hard courts of Indian Wells this week, seeking to shake off the slump that has dogged him into 2017. Djokovic’s five titles in the California desert include the last three.
But the Serbian star arrives at a tournament he has owned shaken by a second-round exit at the Australian Open, which was followed by a shocking quarter-final loss to young Australian Nick Kyrgios in Acapulco. The setbacks come on the back of a troublesome second half of 2016, when he lost his world number one ranking to Andy Murray and relinquished his Wimbledon and US Open titles.
Acknowledging that his longed-for first French Open crown last year left him emotionally depleted, Djokovic nonetheless says his game remains good enough to get him back to the summit.
“Right now I feel like it was better than it was, especially in the second part of last season,” Djokovic said Thursday as unseeded men swung into action in the first ATP Masters tournament of the year. with Novak Djokovic while veteran Leander Paes has combined forces with Juan Martin Del Potro for ATP Indian Wells event. Bopanna is back with his regular partner Pablo Cuevas for this tournament and they face Serbian team of Djokovic and Victor Troicki. Paes has teamed up with Argentine Del Porto and they open their campaign against Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller and American Sam Querry. Sania Mirza and her doubles partner Barbora Strycova of the Czech Republic eased into the second round of Indian Wells after defeating German-Latvian duo of Julia Goerges and Jelena Ostapenko 6-3, 6-4 here. The fourth-seeded Indo-Czech pair consumed just over an hour and 15 minutes after staving off four of eight possible break points.