Tennis great Justine Henin has asserted that Novak Djokovic was \u201cvery lucky\u201d to avoid disqualification at the 2026 Australian Open after making a \u201cviolent gesture\u201d during his latest victory.<\/p>\n
Djokovic<\/a> defeated world No 75 Botic van de Zandschulp 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(4) after two hours and 44 minutes in the third round of the Australian Open<\/a> on Rod Laver Arena.<\/p>\n The 24-time Grand Slam champion looked to be cruising when leading 6-3, 3-0 with a double break in the second set, but his 30-year-old Dutch opponent improved after a medical timeout for a shoulder issue.<\/p>\n When leading 6-3, 4-2 in the second set with van de Zandschulp serving, Djokovic smashed a ball in anger after a point and came close to hitting a ball girl at the side of the net<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the third set, the 38-year-old Serbian came back from 1-3 down and fought off two set points when serving at 5-6.<\/p>\n Djokovic was infamously defaulted in his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the 2020 US Open for hitting a line judge with a ball he struck in frustration.<\/p>\n While commentating on the match for Eurosport, former world No 1 Henin said Djokovic was fortunate to escape given he hit the ball far harder than he did when disqualified at the US Open.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s still crazy after what happened to him at the US Open,\u201d said the seven-time Grand Slam champion<\/p>\n Jannik Sinner makes \u2018got lucky\u2019 confession after surviving major Australian Open heat scare<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Australian Open: Leading expert issues player health warning as extreme heat expected<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s played a lot of matches since his disqualification at the 2020 US Open, but it\u2019s certainly still in the back of his mind.<\/p>\n \u201cBut at the same time, when you\u2019re caught up in the moment, the emotions\u2026 You can feel them overflowing in Djokovic.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019d been trying to contain it for a few games. It came out, and he was lucky, very lucky, in that situation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe immediately saw the umpire look at him and try to talk to him. It was impossible; Djokovic wasn\u2019t going to look at him at that moment.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t even know if Novak responded to him during the change of ends. This gesture is more violent than the one at the US Open, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n Djokovic will face either 16th seed Jakub Mensik or the unseeded Ethan Quinn in the last 16 at Melbourne Park.<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Naomi Osaka withdraws from Australian Open after she dominated headlines<\/a> The post Novak Djokovic \u2018very lucky\u2019 to escape Australian Open disqualification for \u2018violent gesture\u2019 \u2013 tennis great<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tennis great Justine Henin has asserted that Novak Djokovic was \u201cvery lucky\u201d to avoid disqualification at the 2026 Australian Open after making a \u201cviolent gesture\u201d during his latest victory. Djokovic defeated world No 75 Botic van de Zandschulp 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(4) after two hours and 44 minutes in the third round of the Australian Open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Australian Open News<\/h2>\n
What next for Novak Djokovic?<\/h2>\n
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