Novak Djokovic\u2019s decision to pull out of next week\u2019s Rome Masters appeared to suggest he was happy to go into the French Open with just two clay court defeats on his record for this season, but he has a chance to put that right.<\/p>\n
Djokovic\u2019s<\/a> defeat against Alejandro Tabilo in Monte Carlo and his loss against Matteo Arnaldi in his first match at the Madrid Open set alarm bells ringing louder than ever as a player who will toast his 38th birthday this month admitted he may be running out of time to win a record-breaking 25th Grand Slam title.<\/p>\n \u201cKind of new reality for me, I have to say,\u201d said Djokovic after the defeat against Arnaldi.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, trying to win a match or two, not really thinking about getting far in the tournament. It\u2019s a completely different feeling from what I had in 20-plus years of professional tennis, so it\u2019s kind of a challenge for me mentally to really face this kind of sensation on the court, going out early now regularly in the tournaments.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess, the circle of life and the career (smiling), eventually it was going to happen. Now I\u2019m trying to, you know, use this as a driving force for the future. Obviously, Grand Slams, I was saying many times, are the most important tournaments for me.<\/p>\n Novak Djokovic backed to \u2018turn it on\u2019 and win a record-breaking 25th Grand Slam title<\/a><\/p>\n \u2018I still don\u2019t feel it\u2019s enough for me\u2019 \u2013 Novak Djokovic makes telling motivation comment<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWhich doesn\u2019t mean that I don\u2019t want to win here, of course I wanted to, but Grand Slams are where I really want to play the best tennis. I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019ll be able to do that in Roland Garros, but I\u2019ll do my best.\u201d<\/p>\n Djokovic may have been wise to step away from the game for a few weeks, with his motivation to play in regular ATP Tour events waning for some time now.<\/p>\n Yet he faced a similar scenario last year and came up with an unexpected solution.<\/p>\n While his performances in Monte Carlo and Madrid were not quite as poor as they were this year, Djokovic felt the need to get more matches on clay under his belt before heading to Roland Garros and opted to enter the ATP 250 tournament in Geneva.<\/p>\n The three matches he played in that event in Switzerland gave him some momentum heading into the second Grand Slam of the year and he got through to the quarter-finals in Paris before being forced to pull out with an injury.<\/p>\n Djokovic could follow a similar path this year and he could also enter the ATP 500 event in Hamburg in the same week when the Geneva tournament is being played.<\/p>\n World No 1 Jannik Sinner has entered Hamburg as he looks to build up match practice following his three-month drug ban, with the prospect of Djokovic not playing any more matches ahead of Roland Garros a gamble he should avoid taking.<\/p>\n \u201cPressure is part of the sport and part of what we do on this highest level, so it\u2019s never going to go away, it\u2019s just a different kind of pressure now,\u201d he added in his final comments before he left Madrid.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time I step on the court I feel the nerves, I feel stress, I feel everything that I guess all the other players feel, and excitement as well. So, still like to compete, it became a bit more challenging for me, to be honest.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, I\u2019ll do my best for the future. Grand Slam, I\u2019m not going into Roland Garros as one of the main favourites. Maybe that can help, I don\u2019t know, we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n Taylor Fritz has also confirmed he will play in Hamburg so Djokovic could face strong opposition if he decides to play one more clay court event before his assault on another Roland Garros title.<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Novak Djokovic takes a huge Roland Garros gamble with major announcement<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Novak Djokovic could face Jannik Sinner before French Open if he makes schedule change<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Novak Djokovic\u2019s decision to pull out of next week\u2019s Rome Masters appeared to suggest he was happy to go into the French Open with just two clay court defeats on his record for this season, but he has a chance to put that right. Djokovic\u2019s defeat against Alejandro Tabilo in Monte Carlo and his loss […]<\/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-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","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=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More Tennis News<\/h3>\n