Marian Vajda reveals “Novak Djokovic wasn’t completely in his skin” against Rafael Nadal in the French Open final
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Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal
Novak Djokovic finished as the World No.1 for a record sixth time. Further, he was essentially unbeaten for half of the year before the unfortunate incident at the U.S Open, which led to his disqualification. Inspite of performing well even at the tournaments he did not lift the title in, Nole seemed to not be his usual self in the latter half of 2020.
The Serb’s coach, Marian Vajda, who has been with Novak since the onset of his career opened up about the latter’s loss against Rafael Nadal. Vajda stated that inspite of the predictions favouring his ward due to the conditions, Rafa gave an unbelievable performance to lift his 13th Roland Garros title.
In addition, according to Marian, “Novak was not completely in his skin” during his bout with Nadal.
Vajda reveals what went down with Novak
Many cite Djokovic’s performance in Paris to be the turning point for him. Since after the straight-sets loss, he seems to be elsewhere mentally. Whilst results would indicate otherwise, the standards that the World No.1 has set up for himself do garner attention towards this switch in trajectory.
A significant drop in Novak’s performance could be observed when the Serb secured the year-end top rank. He went on to lose against ‘lucky loser’ Lorenzo Sonego in Vienna Open. Moreover, he again lost against Dominic Thiem in London after being 4-0 up in the deciding tie-break.
In an interview with Sport.Sk, Vajda confirmed that a lack of motivation played a factor at the Nitto ATP Finals. “He practically secured the post of the end-of-year world unit in Vienna. He led 4-0 over Dominic in the deciding set (tiebreak), but he lacked a spark,” he stated.
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Chhavi Jindal
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