(Monte-Carlo) After almost four months without playing in competition, Novak Djokovic lost his entry in Monte-Carlo, proving to his cost how high-level tennis requires very fine adjustments both physically and mentally. .
Posted at 2:16 p.m.
The Serb was not lacking in desire, he who had only played three games, in February in Dubai, since the Davis Cup semi-final in early December 2021.
And physically, the world No.1 had had plenty of time to prepare – for weeks he had been training on the courts of the Monte-Carlo Country Club – he who is so straddling everything related to his body. To the point of refusing the anti-covid vaccine, cause of his expulsion from Australia in January and his impossibility to play in Indian Wells and Miami.
However, to listen to him, it was precisely his physique that betrayed him on Tuesday against Alejandro Davidovich after three hours of combat, finally losing 6-3, 6-7 (5/7), 6-1.
After equalizing with one inning everywhere, Djokovic seemed to have once again become the winning machine he had been throughout the 2021 season.
But suddenly, “I physically collapsed, I couldn’t move anymore,” he explained, adding that he “didn’t like” feeling what he felt then.
start over
“With my team, we will try to understand why it happened, we will start from zero and I hope that I will feel better next week in Belgrade” for the ATP 250 tournament, he added.
Besides the physical, Djokovic recalled that clay was not his best surface and that he had never performed very well in the first tournaments of the season on this surface. The statistics confirm it: since his second title in Monte-Carlo in 2015, he has never exceeded the quarters. While over the same period he then won Rome twice (2015, 2020), Madrid twice (2016 and 2019), and Roland-Garros twice (2016 and 2021).
The players consider that the transition from hard to clay is particularly complicated, like Carlos Alcaraz who was eliminated as soon as he entered the competition on Wednesday in Monte-Carlo when he had been a semi-finalist in Indian Wells and titled in Miami just before.
But in the case of Djokovic, whose hard court is the surface of choice (9 titles at the Australian Open and 3 at the United States Open), the question of adaptation does not arise this year since he does not had not been allowed to enter the United States.
“Performance is systemic, it is linked to many parameters. At high level, the slightest grain of sand can disturb the athlete, “said psychologist Meriem Salmi, used to working with champions, for AFP.
Not the same experience
And if Djokovic’s failure necessarily recalls, by contrast, the feat of Rafael Nadal who won his 21st in January in Australia.and Grand Slam title by not playing throughout the second half of 2021 due to a foot injury, Mme Salmi emphasizes the impossibility of comparing the two situations.
“You have to distinguish a stoppage on injury from a stoppage on a ban. What Djokovic went through is disturbing. We think that great athletes are insensitive, but no! They are human beings”, she notes, insisting: “We cannot compare their covers (of Djokovic and Nadal, editor’s note), the experience is not the same”.
The lack of competition is certainly a difficult factor to manage. Stan Wawrinka, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga or Dominic Thiem have demonstrated this recently.
In the case of Djokovic and Nadal, this factor plays less, because they are particularly exceptional and have an immense experience, both in competition and with their bodies.
“They are used to it and they know how to manage”, underlines Mme Salmi.
“But there may also be elements in the private life that we do not know. Djokovic may not have anticipated that it would be so annoying not to be vaccinated, ”she says.