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After his victory over Stefanos Tsitsipas in the Australian Open final, Novak Djokovic responded to comments accusing him of faking and not really being injured during the tournament.
For the second time, Novak Djokovic won the Australian Open with an injury and for the second time, the intensity, even the veracity of this discomfort, could be disputed. These comments did not please the Serb, who spoke in a press conference after his three-set victory over Stefanos Tsitsipas in Melbourne.
“These two weeks I was thinking whether I should publish anything about the injury, and I told myself that I will, I want to,” the Serb said after his straight sets win over Stefanos Tsitsipas. “I will go into more detail and publish some photos on social media about everything we went through. I don’t want to sound pathetic; I won the trophy. But two years ago, a similar thing happened, and people are doubting (that injury) even today, they say all kinds of things, make fun of it etc. I feel the need to show and prove certain things. Not so much for those people, but for me – some comments bother me a little. You will get to know everything in a few days time.”
In 2020, he complained of a torn abdomen in his third round against Taylor Fritz and said he would prove he was injured by releasing a documentary.
DJOKOVIC: “IF IT WAS JUST A SMALL PROBLEM, I WOULD PRACTICE, RIGHT?”
During the Australian Open, Djokovic said he never once practiced on his off days.
“That fact speaks for itself, it says that the injury represented something that I needed to address in a proper way, so that I could recover for my next match. If it was just a small issue, then I would practice, right? I have never experienced this situation before, to not practice on off days since the start of the tournament,” the10-time Australian Open champion said before adding, “There are certain things that I would have liked to work on in practice – at least half an hour, some patterns for my next opponent for instance. I wanted to in the last four or five days, but my team stopped me: they said ’no’ and I accepted it“.”
The winner of ten Australian Opens explained all the difficulties he had to overcome this last month.
“It was very exhausting since the moment I came to Australia – started with injury, things with my father, a lot of things piled up,” he said. “But I obviously needed all of that, God made my path the way it should be. I am telling you this from the bottom of my heart – I have believed in God my whole life, I believe in guardian angels and I have felt their support more than any other time, talking about what I had to deal with when it comes to my body.”
Novak Djokovic won a 22nd Grand Slam tournament and equaled Rafael Nadal’s record, starting his 374th week as world number one on Monday.
