Novak Djokovic faced a series of obstacles Sunday in the Miami Open final: a delay of more than 5 1\/2 hours before the match, an eye infection and a slippery court due to high levels of humidity following the rain.
\nBut the largest roadblock was the youth and power of 6-foot-4, 19-year-old phenom Jakub Mensik, who outdueled the 37-year-old Serbian 7-6 (4), 7-6 (4) to win his first ATP title, The Associated Press reported.
\nRanked 54th entering the tournament, the Czech Republic teenager plowed through Djokovic with poise and a stellar 130 mph serve. He collected 14 aces and got broken only once. Mensik bashed a service winner on match point and fell on his back.
\n“You\u2019re the one I idolized when I was young,” Mensik said to Djokovic during the ceremony after the match that lasted 2 hours, 3 minutes. \u201cI started playing tennis because of you.”
\nMensik\u2019s victory spoiled the party for Djokovic, who was seeking his 100th career title and a record seventh in the Miami Open. Djokovic will have to wait, while the teenager looks ready to join the elite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Novak Djokovic faced a series of obstacles Sunday in the Miami Open final: a delay of more than 5 1\/2 hours before the match, an eye infection and a slippery court due to high levels of humidity following the rain. But the largest roadblock was the youth and power of 6-foot-4, 19-year-old phenom Jakub Mensik, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45588,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45587\/revisions\/45588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}