{"id":17638,"date":"2025-04-13T22:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T22:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/17638\/"},"modified":"2025-04-13T22:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T22:26:09","slug":"novak-djokovic-got-ugly-comment-from-alex-de-minaur-at-monte-carlo-masters-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/17638\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic got ‘ugly’ comment from Alex de Minaur at Monte-Carlo Masters | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novak Djokovic<\/a> had another disappointing outing at the Monte-Carlo Masters this week, losing his opening match<\/a> to Alejandro Tabilo. While the Serb wasn\u2019t happy with his performance<\/a>, it wasn\u2019t a complete surprise to see him lose early, as he has struggled at the tournament in recent years.<\/p>\n

Since winning the title for the second time in 2016, Djokovic has only been to the semi-final in Monaco once, 12 months ago. Djokovic beat Alex de Minaur<\/a> to make it to the last four, and the Aussie made an unusual \u201cugly\u201d remark when they shook hands at the net.<\/p>\n

Djokovic is set to lose a small chunk of ranking points next week as he failed to match last year\u2019s run at the Monte-Carlo Masters. A semi-finalist in 2024, he fell at the first hurdle this time out.<\/p>\n

The world No. 5 has had difficulty stringing victories together at the Monte-Carlo Country Club in recent years. He also lost his opening match in 2022 and couldn\u2019t get beyond round three in both 2021 and 2023.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s semi-final showing was something of an outlier. Djokovic went on a good run, beating strong players like De Minaur and Lorenzo Musetti before losing to Casper Ruud.<\/p>\n

The Serb found ways to win when he wasn\u2019t playing his best tennis – something De Minaur pointed out after their quarter-final showdown. Djokovic came through 7-5 6-4, getting revenge after the Aussie beat him at the United Cup earlier in the year.<\/p>\n

It was a rollercoaster match with eight breaks of serve. Djokovic hit 26 unforced errors but still got the job done, and he revealed that De Minaur told him it was an \u201cugly\u201d contest.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said in the net that it was ugly in the second set. I think it was,\u201d the two-time champion in Monte-Carlo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t play really at the high level, we made a lot of unforced errors him and I. A lot of consecutive breaks of serve which is kind of expected for clay but maybe not this many.\u201d<\/p>\n

Djokovic later opened up about how he found a way to \u201cwin ugly\u201d.<\/p>\n

He explained: \u201cYou know, sometimes you just have to find a way to win. Today that was the case. In the end maybe you’re not feeling your best or playing your best.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I had some really good moments, some brilliant moments, and I had some moments where I was struggling to hit the ball clean.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there was no winning ugly for Djokovic this year. The world No. 5 slammed his performance after coming off the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was actually more like the worst day. Look, I was hoping it was not going to happen, but it was quite a high probability I’m going to play this way,\u201d he said after suffering a 6-3 6-4 defeat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t know. Just horrible. Horrible feeling to play this way, and just sorry for all the people that have to witness this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic had another disappointing outing at the Monte-Carlo Masters this week, losing his opening match to Alejandro…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[11809,4324,4295,79,1068,5838,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-17638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-alex-de-minaur","9":"tag-monte-carlo-masters","10":"tag-novak-djokovic","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-tennis-news","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114333010022773224","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}