After losing a second straight opening match and three in a row overall, Novak Djokovic said he was facing a \u201cnew reality\u201d in his two decades of pro tennis.
\nDjokovic’s public coming to terms with his rare losing streak came after he fell in straight sets to Matteo Arnaldi in his first match of the Madrid Open on Saturday, The Associated Press reported.
\nThe 37-year-old Djokovic came to Spain after also losing his opener to Alejandro Tabilo at the Monte Carlo Masters two weeks ago and, before that, the Miami Open final.
\n\u201cI was hoping I can play one more match than I played in Monte Carlo. (It’s) kind of a new reality for me, I have to say, trying to win a match or two, not really thinking about getting far in the tournament,” Djokovic said.
\nThe struggles by the winner of 24 Grand Slam titles coincide with the start of the clay-court swing culminating in the French Open next month.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a completely different feeling from what I had in 20-plus years of professional tennis,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a challenge for me mentally to really face these kinds of sensations on the court, going out early now regularly in tournaments.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After losing a second straight opening match and three in a row overall, Novak Djokovic said he was facing a \u201cnew reality\u201d in his two decades of pro tennis. Djokovic’s public coming to terms with his rare losing streak came after he fell in straight sets to Matteo Arnaldi in his first match of the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47328","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\/47328","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=47328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47329,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47328\/revisions\/47329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}