Novak Djokovic surprisingly stopped his Six Kings Slam third-place play-off with Taylor Fritz at the end of the first set, before addressing the crowd in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The pair played out a high-quality first set before the Serb walked over to the umpire and announced that he would be ending the match, effective immediately.
Fritz came out on top, 7-6, after 76 gruelling minutes, and although Djokovic was feeling the heat it came as a shock to the Netflix commentators that he quit the match. They admitted that it was “surprising” to see the 38-year-old call an end to the contest.
Djokovic announced that he plans to “address the physical issues he’s been having and hopefully playing the last couple of tournaments of the season” as he apologised to those in Saudi who came to watch him compete.
He did hint at returning to the event next year, however, and his comments suggest that he may still turn out at competitions this season – potentially in Turin.
“I want to apologise to everybody, sorry guys, I’m sorry you couldn’t see the second set,” Djokovic said. “But credit to Taylor, I mean, we had some incredible games towards the end of that set, and it was one of the longest sets I’ve ever played, to be honest.
“It was amazing to be in Riyadh once again, I want to thank everybody for really welcoming me here. This is the third time I have been here in three years and hopefully, if I keep on going next year, I’ll be back, if you guys want me here.”
Djokovic walked down the tunnel to a huge applause before Fritz took the microphone and said: “That was really physical. What happens is you get into those really long games and the ball starts to wear out and get so huge, to the point where it’s so hard to get a free point on the serve, or a winner, so it’s playing the long points and games.
“It makes everything slower, longer, it’s such a tough set and at the end of it, conditions just got so slow. We were playing long rallies, back-to-back-to-back, just fighting for every point, so it was brutal.”
When asked what it is like to play against Djokovic, Fritz replied: “It’s amazing. It’s crazy, all these guys that I grew up watching dominate tennis and I get to play with them, it’s not like this is anything new, Novak’s been beating me for a very long time, probably at least the last eight years.
“It’s always a pleasure to share the court with the best players of all time.”
When the American was asked who he thought would win in the final between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, he added: “Don’t do that to me, but it’s really tough to say.
“What I will say when I played Carlos it felt very, very tough. I definitely want to see what Sinner does to deal with that, because I didn’t have the answers.”