Novak Djokovic apologised to everyone who had to \u201cwitness\u201d his Monte Carlo Masters contest against Alejandro Tabilo after a surprise defeat to the world No 32.<\/p>\n
In his first clay-court match of the season, third seed and world No 5 Djokovic<\/a> was beaten 6-3, 6-4 by Tabilo<\/a> \u2013 a man who had held a underwhelming 3-9 record for 2025 until beating the Serbian.<\/p>\n The Chilean had previously beaten Djokovic in Rome, and is now one of just three men to have played multiple matches against Djokovic without tasting defeat.<\/p>\n Defeat for the 24-time Grand Slam champion extended a poor run in Monte Carlo, with Djokovic having failed to reach the final since winning the title for a second time in 2015.<\/p>\n It also means that the 37-year-old will lose 390 points after failing to match his semi-final run from 2024, putting his hopes of a top-four seeding at the French Open in jeopardy.<\/p>\n Djokovic came into Monte Carlo off the back of a good run at the Miami Open two weeks ago, having reached his first final of the season in Florida.<\/p>\n Many had backed the Serbian to triumph in Monte Carlo ahead of the tournament, though Djokovic admitted before the tournament that a lingering eye infection was impacting his form.<\/p>\n Novak Djokovic suffers blow in French Open seed race with\u00a0shocking Monte Carlo loss<\/a><\/p>\n Novak Djokovic\u2019s prize money comments questioned as \u2018bigger picture\u2019 may be the primary focus<\/a><\/p>\n And, in a damning assessment of his performance against Tabilo, the 37-year-old claimed that he had failed to meet his already low pre-tournament expectations.<\/p>\n \u201cI expected myself at least to have put in a decent performance. Not like this. It was horrible,\u201d Djokovic said.<\/p>\n \u201cI did not have high expectations. I knew I\u2019m going to have a tough opponent and I knew I\u2019m going to probably play pretty bad. But this bad, I didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n \u201cI was hoping it was not going to happen, but it was quite a high probability I\u2019m going to play this way. I don\u2019t know. [It was] just horrible.<\/p>\n \u201cA horrible feeling to play this way, and just sorry for all the people that have to witness this.\u201d<\/p>\n Victory for Tabilo follows a battling three-set win over Stan Wawrinka in the opening round, and represents the first time he has recorded back-to-back wins this season.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a tough year,\u201d said Tabilo. \u201cSo the nerves were there a bit. I tried to remember what I did well last time.<\/p>\n \u201cThank God I served well today. It helped me a lot to regroup my game after that first game. It was an unreal match I think.\u201d<\/p>\n The Chilean, who has a career-high ranking of 19th, will next face 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov.<\/p>\n Bulgarian star Dimitrov battled from a set down to beat wildcard Valentin Vacherot 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Read Next<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>The 3 men to hold a 2-0 record over Novak Djokovic: Alejandro Tabilo joins exclusive club<\/a><\/p>\n The post Novak Djokovic reacts after \u2018horrible\u2019 Monte Carlo Masters defeat<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Novak Djokovic apologised to everyone who had to \u201cwitness\u201d his Monte Carlo Masters contest against Alejandro Tabilo after a surprise defeat to the world No 32. In his first clay-court match of the season, third seed and world No 5 Djokovic was beaten 6-3, 6-4 by Tabilo \u2013 a man who had held a underwhelming […]<\/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-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276","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=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Novak Djokovic News<\/h2>\n