{"id":74161,"date":"2025-05-04T15:27:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T15:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/74161\/"},"modified":"2025-05-04T15:27:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T15:27:09","slug":"novak-djokovic-will-leave-tennis-experts-bloated-after-forcing-them-to-eat-their-own-words-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/74161\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic will leave tennis experts bloated after forcing them to eat their own words | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everybody is coming out of the woodwork to write off Novak Djokovic<\/a> following his withdrawal from next week’s Italian Open. Alarm bells are ringing because the Serbian will miss the event for the first time since 2007.<\/p>\n

Three defeats in a row, devoid of confidence and refusing to turn up in Rome has Annabel Croft feeling that Djokovic has lost his aura. It’s likely he’ll arrive at Roland Garros having not won a match on clay in 12 months.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for the 24-time Grand Slam winner, he won’t play anybody with half of his talent until at least the third round.<\/p>\n

Being seeded gives him the benefit of facing lesser opponents to find his feet.<\/p>\n

And if that is not enough, he has the luxury of best-of-five sets to overcome any early setbacks.<\/p>\n

A player of Djokovic’s quality doesn’t need to get out of second gear in the early rounds and he could comfortably use those encounters as his warm-up.<\/p>\n

Many wrote the 37-year-old off before the Australian Open<\/a> and he beat Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> en route to the semis.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the Majors, Djokovic is a mentality monster. Pundits must be bloated with how many times he has made them eat their words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everybody is coming out of the woodwork to write off Novak Djokovic following his withdrawal from next week’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[5066,36729,4295,15172,79,1068,36730,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-74161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-french-open","9":"tag-italian-open-withdrawal","10":"tag-novak-djokovic","11":"tag-roland-garros","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tennis","14":"tag-tennis-pundits","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114450271028094331","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74161","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=74161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}