Monday, March 23, 2009

What's wrong with Djokovic?

If you were following tennis in the early part of last year, you couldn't help coming across Novak Djokovic's name every couple of weeks. Djokovic, was playing the best tennis of everyone on the tour and it seemed like it was only a matter of time until he replaced Federer as the #1 player in the world. Both Nadal and Federer were off their games, Federer in particular had some horrible performances in several of his matches early last year. At the Australian Open, Djokovic, snapped Federer's streak of 10 straight grand slam finals and beat Nadal, one month later at the Pacific Life Open. Novak, even won the Rome Masters series title, by defeating Stanislas Wawrinka in the finals. The following week Novak, earned himself a chance to become the #2 player in the world by reaching The Hamburg semi-finals. Ironically his opponent was the current #2 player in the world Nadal. After an exciting 3 hour match, Nadal walked away the winner and saved his ranking. Djokovic, continued to impress by reaching the semi-finals at the French Open (again losing to Nadal) and later made the finals at The Artois Championships where he lost to Nadal again.

It was around this point that Djokovic started to struggle, he lost early at Wimbledon and the Rogers Cup although he was able to avenge his series of losses to Nadal, during the US Open Series. Nole, seemed to regain some of his fire at the Olympics and won most of his matches easily but he was stopped again by Nadal in the semi-finals.

The next month he made the semi-finals at the US Open and consistently had good results at the tournaments but he wasn't able to win a title. Nole, went on a losing streak against Jo Wilfried Tsonga and lost to him 3 times before the end of the year. Despite the setbacks he was still able to win the Masters Cup for the first time.

Since the beginning of the year, Djokovic hasn't brought his best performance to most of his matches. He lost in the quarter-finals at the Australian Open and was beaten at the BNP Paribas Open. His head-to-head against the top players is bad. He's lost the majority of the matches against Federer, Nadal, Tsonga, and Roddick.

I would like to see Djokovic turn this slump around but I'm not sure if he's capable of it. At times he doesn't seem to really be motivated and I wouldn't be surprised to see Andy Murray take over the #3 ranking, sometime around Wimbledon. I could even see Murray replacing Federer in about a year. Federer's, seems to be declining and he said on his website that Mirka is pregnant with their child. I don't think this can do anything but make his lessen his chances of staying on top. The big question for me is, whether or not Federer break Sampras's record of 14 majors.