Mumbai: “You can imagine,” Novak Djokovic mentioned, resting again on his chair moments after dropping his Madrid opener and days earlier than his Rome withdrawal, “twenty years I didn’t experience what I’m experiencing in the last 12 months. Early exits, and way too many.”
Novak Djokovic throughout the Madrid Open. (AP)
Over these 20 years, Djokovic surged to ranges that have been so unshakably constant that it personified mechanical excellence. Throughout the final 12 months, there have been evident indicators of slide and rust. Within the final month, it has been on an alarming freefall.
Final yr, the Paris Olympics gold medallist was struggling to win titles. This yr, the 24-time Grand Slam champion is struggling to win matches.
Djokovic is about to move to Roland Garros later this month having not received a match on clay. He misplaced his opening duels in Madrid and Monte Carlo and, earlier this week, introduced he was pulling out of the Rome match. Add the defeat within the Miami ultimate and make it three consecutive losses for a champion who, a decade in the past, went a whole season dropping simply six matches (and profitable 82).
That’s not even probably the most surprising stat, by the way in which.
The final time Djokovic misplaced three matches on the bounce was in 2018. That’s occurred twice in 2025 already; Australian Open-Doha-Indian Wells being the opposite tumbling troika.
The final time Djokovic exited a match from his opening battle was in 2022, in Monte Carlo. That’s occurred 4 instances in 2025 already; all in his final 5 match outings.
Djokovic, 37, termed this nightmarish stretch a “new reality” for him.
“Just trying to win a match or two, you know, not really thinking about getting far in the tournament. It’s a completely different feeling from what I had 20-plus years of professional tennis. A challenge for me mentally to face these kind of sensations on the court,” he mentioned after his Madrid defeat.
For a part of these 20-plus years, the Serb seldom had questions in regards to the degree of tennis hanging over his head. If bodily match and mentally recent, Djokovic dished out a sure high quality normal that might be ok to go previous an enormous share of gamers on the tour and place him deep into tournaments virtually on autopilot.
That degree, with an ageing physique, has virtually crash-landed over the previous month on the purple grime. His on-court motion seems a contact slower, the returns much less daunting and the strokes extra defective. Towards Matteo Arnaldi in Madrid, he dished out 32 unforced errors. The depend was 29 towards Alejandro Tabilo in Monte Carlo, a efficiency Djokovic self-assessed to be “horrible”.
That’s not only a regarding search for the current and way forward for a modern-day tennis nice, but in addition for probably the most thrilling teaching partnership in current instances. The Andy Murray-Djokovic combo was off to a blossoming begin on the Australian Open (Djokovic beat Carlos Alcaraz earlier than retiring within the semi-final towards Alexander Zverev) however has since light to some gloomy clouds of doubt.
“The level of tennis is not where I’d like it to be,” Djokovic mentioned in Madrid. “Things are different… my strokes, my body, my movement.”
It’s making the world No.5 go right down to the sort of gamers he would in any other case have little hassle breezing previous. It’s now not about working right into a Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer or a Jannik Sinner and Alcaraz; it’s now about being halted by Reilly Opelka (ranked 293) in Brisbane, Matteo Berrettini (35) in Doha, Botin van de Zandschulp (85) in Indian Wells, Jakub Mensik (54) in Miami, Tabilo (32) in Monte Carlo and Arnaldi (44) in Madrid.
“Lots of different players who he wouldn’t normally lose to,” Annabel Croft, former British ladies’s No.1, instructed Sky Sports activities in Madrid. “I don’t quite know what’s going on, whether there’s distractions, or he’s just not happy, or he’s lost confidence. But whatever’s happening, he’s not looking in great shape heading towards the French Open.”
For some time now, Djokovic has maintained that his precedence stays the Grand Slams and discovering his peak degree there. In that sense, although the 24-time champion hasn’t received a Slam since 2023, he has made not less than the second week in them (besides final yr’s US Open). He pressed clutch on the Paris Olympics, and zoomed to the highest of the rostrum.
Champions like him know when and how you can step up. At the moment, although, the tennis large finds himself at one of many lowest factors of his profession. Djokovic has accepted he isn’t among the many favourites for the French Open. And his new actuality.
“That’s, I guess, the circle of life and of the career. Eventually, it was going to happen,” he mentioned. “I’m trying to use it as a driving force for the future.”