All credit to his opponent in his match,deserved the win, though I have to say Novak's balance was off, not an excuse just an observation, if you compare his first round match to his 2nd match.Novak is a well balanced athlete, lets see how he fares in his defense at RG this year
He is, most of the time, but not always. We've discussed on this forum in the past few years, and, as I pointed out to Don Fabio on the Italian Open thread, Jimmy Arias has a theory about it: that he's not balanced when he's nervous. He started out his first round match by dropping serve twice, I think, so there was some rust to be seen, but then he seemed to right the ship and steamroll Moutet.
A player showing signs of being nervous/ under stress in a match of course can result in being 'unbalanced' age is also another factor, that also has to be considered.
Tennis Channel just said that he did accept it.
Well that is a suprise if I may say so,just looking at the field in Geneva it is quite packed with players wanting to improve their clay legs before RG.
At that time he was playing sublime tennis.Are these early signs of desperation? Reminds me of 2022 when to catch up and qualify for the YEC, Djokovic played Astana & Tele Viv!
Tabilo played a blinder against him so I guess it's harsh to say he bottled it?
Don't blame @don_fabio, who is always fair. A lot of commentators have been making much of Novak being off his game. Maybe you meant the pun that he "bottled" it, but I do think overmuch is being made of the water bottle that hit him on the head. Djokovic has been off his game the whole year. He's dumped a lot of his team, and is still trying to figure it out. Let's see how he does in Geneva. But Tabilo, to his credit, more than backed up his win over Novak.Tabilo played a blinder against him so I guess it's harsh to say he bottled it?
Good for Dominic, for taking his lumps. To this point, and since I had complained about the unknown Gioranni Mpetchi Perricard getting a wildcard instead of Dominick or Stan, the young Frenchment won today over Lorenzo Sonego, whom I'd call an in-form player and good on clay, so I should not have picked on him, randomly. And he beat Sonego 6-3, 6-4. Mpetchi Perricard is 20 years old. I'll be curious to see him play.
Dom had a very down to earth attitude about not receiving a WC, most GS they will hand out WC to their players of origin eg French, they do give out reciprocal wc to Australia and USO,
