Wasn’t Roger Federer supposed to leave this year’s Australian Open earlier than the other Fab Four? What about Rafa Nadal?
Quite frankly nobody could predict Novak Djokovic’s shocking second-round exit in the first Grand Slam of the year. After losing to Andy Murray in the ATP Finals and dropping the number one ranking to the Scot at the end of 2016, a couple of weeks ago Djokovic was able to exact revenge on Murray in the Doha final and seemed perfectly on route to his 7th Australian Open title, until he clashed with Denis Istomin – a good tennis player but certainly not a phenomenon. Unlike Roger, Rafa or Andy, in the last nine years Novak had never left a Grand Slam event in the early rounds. That is why his loss to Istomin shocked everyone.
Born in the former Soviet Union from Russian parents, Denis Istomin now plays for Uzbekistan and will turn 31 in September. In 2012 he achieved his best ranking of 33 in the world. Before upsetting Djokovic on Thursday evening, in his entire career he had defeated only one top ten player – David Ferrer. After a 2016 season heavily affected by injuries, he dropped outside the top 100 in the ATP rankings and had to win the ASIA-PACIFIC pre-qualifying tournament in order to receive a wild-card for this year’s Australian Open. His master class performance against the winner of five of the last six Australian Opens was as unexpected as it may sound.
Djokovic’s loss is undoubtedly a sigh of relief for Andy Murray, who will probably retain his number one ranking until Wimbledon while the Serb – who won almost every tournament in the first half of 2016 – will have to defend too many points. In Australia Murray lost one final to Roger Federer and a whopping four finals to Novak Djokovic, including last year’s championship match; at this point we all wonder if the Scot will finally grab a title that has eluded him for so many years. Sir Andy is now the overwhelming favorite of the tournament, but he will have to maintain his focus because his next opponent is none other than Sam Querrey – the American who ended Djokovic’s amazing run at Wimbledon last year when Nole looked unbeatable.
Speaking of Novak Djokovic, the Serb was a shadow of himself during his five-set loss to Istomin last night. He made 72 unforced errors and produced only 68 winners; most importantly he played far worse than his opponent in the key moments of the match.
“We played four and a half hours and I didn’t feel comfortable on the court. I couldn’t find my rhythm while he was hitting the ball beautifully. He might not have had a lot of experience in big matches and was the clear underdog, but he was mentally very strong in the most important moments. He deserved to win,” Djokovic said after the match.
It is worth mentioning that Djokovic behaved like a true gentleman throughout his entire post-match press conference. It wasn’t an easy situation for him, but he answered every question with dignity and class. After a tough loss, Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal can sometimes be so bitter, impolite and reticent that they almost come across as disrespectful.
In the women’s tournament, Croatia’s Mirian Lucic-Baroni caused another massive upset, defeating the No. 3 seed Aga Radwanska. A former child prodigy, Lucic-Baroni hadn’t won a match down under since her debut in 1998.
Friday’s feature matches include Murray vs. Querrey and Wawrinka vs. Troicky, but the big match of the day will be Roger Federer vs. Tomas Berdych. Berdych defeated King Fed 5 times in 20 attempts, although most of those matches were contested when Roger was on top of the world. A couple of days ago the young American Noah Rubin – who lost to Federer in the second round – said: “Federer is an alien. Murray never misses a ball, Djokovic is a machine, Wawrinka is unpredictable and Fed will always be Fed!”
Ubaldo Scanagatta (Article translation provided by T&L Global – Translation & Language Solutions – www.t-lglobal.com )
