Novak Djokovic cut a disconsolate figure as he admitted he produced a \u2018horrible\u2019 performance in his defeat against Alejandro Tabilo at the Monte Carlo Masters, but he may reflect that he made a mistake by playing in the opening ATP 1000 Masters tournament of the clay court season.<\/p>\n
After an impressive run to the Miami Open final that saw Djokovic<\/a> play his best tennis since his memorable win at last year\u2019s Olympic Games in Paris, it would have been understandable for the 24-time Grand Slam king to delay his return to European clay courts.<\/p>\n An appearance at the Madrid Open later this month or even the Rome Masters in early May might have been a natural moment for Djokovic to step onto the red dirt, but his new philosophy for 2025 saw him take up his entry in Monte Carlo.<\/p>\n Ranking points were up for grabs and getting into the top four of the ATP list could be important in his mission to win a record-breaking 25th Grand Slam title at the French Open or Wimbledon over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n Yet it was clear that Djokovic was not ready to play in Monte Carlo and he confirmed as much in a brutally honest post-match press conference.<\/p>\n Novak Djokovic receives surprise ATP rankings boost as top rivals suffer shock exits<\/a><\/p>\n Novak Djokovic\u2019s 5 worst Monte Carlo Masters defeats: ft world No 32 Alejandro Tabilo<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt was actually more like the worst day,\u201d said Djokovic. \u201cLook, I was hoping this was not going to happen, but it was quite a high probability I\u2019m going to play this way. I don\u2019t know, just horrible. Horrible feeling to play this way and I\u2019m just sorry for all the people who had to witness this.<\/p>\n \u201cI expected myself at least to have put in a decent performance. Not like this, I mean this is horrible. I did not have high expectations, really. I knew I was gonna have a tough opponent and I knew I was gonna probably play pretty bad. But this bad\u2026 I didn\u2019t expect.\u201d<\/p>\n Djokovic confirmed his only focus during the European clay court season is the French Open at Roland Garros and that said all we needed to know about his motivation to play in Monte Carlo.<\/p>\n It may be that Djokovic is expecting this to be his final year on the ATP Tour and he is keen to play as many tournaments as possible for one last time, but he must now be reflecting that he made the wrong call by playing in Monte Carlo.<\/p>\n There were big questions over Djokovic\u2019s future in tennis last year as he openly admitted he was not motivated to play in regular tour events, but that mindset appears to have shifted this year as he has played in more events than expected, including an appearance in a tournament in Qatar.<\/p>\n Finding a balance between playing enough matches to stay in shape and not overplaying is a tough task when you are approaching your 38th birthday, with former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash telling Tennis365 that Djokovic may have got it wrong last year.<\/p>\n \u201cOlder players fall into this trap every time that they are trying to save their body and they don\u2019t always get a good balance on playing enough matches,\u201d Cash told Tennis365.<\/p>\n \u201cYou tend to see older players start to lose five-set matches or have more bad days and that\u2019s natural.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s match toughness. I know Novak has played a lot of matches over the course of his career, but he still needs to be match-tough going into a best-of-five-set Grand Slam tournament.<\/p>\n \u201cWe often say you can\u2019t afford to get into tough five-set matches in the first week of a Slam as you need to stay fresh and that\u2019s especially true when you get older.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t have enough matches under your belt and you play a long one early on, I tell you what, you are going to be so sore.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the big secret for Novak. If he can get his schedule right and make sure he has the right number of matches under his belt, he can win again.\u201d<\/p>\n Djokovic was not ready to play in Monte Carlo and didn\u2019t need to put himself through the trauma of losing for a second successive match against Tabilo, so don\u2019t be surprised if the most successful male tennis player of all-time opts to take some time away from competitive action now as he plots his French Open masterplan.<\/p>\n READ NEXT: \u2018There was certainly something wrong with Novak Djokovic at the Monte Carlo Masters\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Novak Djokovic\u2019s schedule may be hurting him in 2025 \u2013 does he need to change direction?<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Novak Djokovic cut a disconsolate figure as he admitted he produced a \u2018horrible\u2019 performance in his defeat against Alejandro Tabilo at the Monte Carlo Masters, but he may reflect that he made a mistake by playing in the opening ATP 1000 Masters tournament of the clay court season. After an impressive run to the Miami […]<\/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-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","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=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More Tennis News<\/h3>\n