He made a lot of unforced errors, I thought, for the first set and a half,” said Djokovic who extended his winning streak against left-handers at Grand Slams to 18 matches. “I expected Denis to come out and be aggressive. He skilfully dominated the 19-year-old, who could not find enough winners to throw the 14-time Grand Slam winner off his stride until the dazzling interruption to concentration. Up till his mini-meltdown, Djokovic had made his outing on centre court look like an afternoon practice session for two-and-a-half sets against Shapovalov, one of the NextGen stars tipped to take over from the sport’s old guard. “Other than the little letdown that I had when I was 4-1, 4-2 up in the third set, other than that I thought I played well, especially in the fourth set.” At 4-1 (up in the third set), I was agitated. “For the first two sets, just had things under control. That’s why I got the code violation,” a sheepish Djokovic told reporters after he had calmed down. The normally mild-mannered Djokovic earned his warning from French umpire Damien Dumusois for snapping at a cheeky fan who shouted “Nervous?”, as he faced three break points at 4-4, 0-40 in the third set. I hope the viewers enjoyed it,” he added. The explanation I got was for TV reasons. “Completely unnecessary to turn on the lights. “I think there was no sense to turn on lights on court at 5pm when we have another four hours of daylight,” fumed the Serb 14-time Grand Slam winner. He seethed when leading 3-0 in the third set against the 25th-seeded Canadian when the powerful lights blazed on all around Rod Laver Arena - in broad daylight.Īn incandescent Djokovic lost his focus, swore towards a wise-cracking fan and dropped six of the next seven games as the red mist descended under bright sunshine. The Serb angrily blamed floodlights for dropping a tournament set for the first time as he beat Denis Shapovalov 6-3, 6-4, 4-6, 6-0 in the third round. Top seed Novak Djokovic admitted he should have “known better” than to let a floodlight row get to him after copping a code violation during a mini-meltdown in the Australian Open Saturday. Serbia’s Novak Djokovic reacts after a point against Canada’s Denis Shapovalov during their men’s singles match on day six of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 19, 2019.
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