Novak Djokovic "Sinner & Rublev will not be Happy..." - 2024

Congratulations. You looked quite uncomfortable in the first two sets in the heat there. Was there an element of your thinking which was along the lines of I just need to hang on for a little bit and then when it gets cooler I'll be good to go? Yeah you could say so. I mean I was looking forward to have the full shade on the stadium. It was a hot day. Obviously we started with a 16 or 17 minute first game which took a lot out of us both players and very close first set. Just physically grueling rallies and he was yeah making me uncomfortable on the court because he was very aggressive. He served great and he was staying close to the line taking the ball early you know making me you know run and I was oftentimes on the back foot so credit to him for playing really well and you could see that he had a clear game plan and he was really sharp so it was definitely a struggle you know for me to play the first couple sets and then I think in the third things started to come together. I started to swing through the ball better started to feel better on the court and serve serve also you know I wasn't serving well at all first two sets and then third and fourth great you know I think I maybe even served more aces than him which was a surprising stat considering he's got one of the best serves around. So that made my life easier on the court obviously winning my service games you know slightly easier so to say you know cruising through and then putting pressure on his service games so but you know the way I played in the third and fourth is something that I'm really really pleased with yeah. Can I ask you a scheduling question there's potentially another late finish tonight so is it even could be a possible advantage for you is it fair from a sporting integrity point of view for the tournament and what further changes what do you think should be done? What kind of advantage will I have I mean we have two days so it's not much of an advantage I see that I that I see there I mean we have we're playing semifinals on Friday so plenty of time for whoever wins that match tonight to recover. Scheduling has become a hot topic so to say you know we talked about it and I think few matches ago I talked about it on the press conference and I couldn't give a really clear answer to that because I mean it's really up to Grand Slams and our respective tours to think about the ways to accommodate both male and female players in a proper way so we have no late finishes I think ATP came up with this with this rule change but that's on ATP tour Grand Slams are not part of the ATP tour so they have their separate rules and regulations that obviously are independent from our tours and we know that there are two sessions right so if you are scheduling two matches starting at 12 with men playing best of five if he goes three four hours you know takes for them I think whatever 45 minutes to clean the stadium bringing new fans for the night session so it all it takes a lot of time you know in Coco golf played a long match today I played a very long match today and then you have the night session starting two hours after they were scheduled after the time they were scheduled so not ideal obviously not not great also for Sinner and Rublev I'm sure that they are not happy with the potential start of whatever I don't know the match of Sabalenka is going but you never know I mean they could even start at midnight so yeah we've seen in the past some late finishes and I know for the crowds and for the tournament in a way it's kind of exciting to see a 4 a.m. finish a 3 a.m. finish I was part of some of those you know but it's definitely not fun for us you know the good thing about the quarterfinalist of on the men's section is that we have two days so I think that's plenty of time to get a good sleep and recover but yeah I get your point look there are different ways to address this maybe you know scheduling less matches on the center court doing it in one session which is most likely not gonna happen because every session carries a lot of economical value for them so of course they are going to communicate it and try to that way and try to get as many people for different sessions and TV broadcasting is there's a lot of elements that are in play you know TV broadcasting is the pays a lot of money to the tournament and sponsors the tournament so obviously you know in the end of the day they are the ones drawing the line and saying you know we want to see this player that session etc etc you know even though of course I mean Craig Tiley here who's a great person and I respect him a lot and he's always trying to do his best for players you know he's a tournament director and you know he's obviously trying always to communicate with players and take their opinions in consideration but you know TV broadcasting channels have the biggest power we know that which is not unusual because you know they're the ones they're giving us the stage as well the platform to reach out to millions of people around the world which is great for us so yeah it's hard to say what the best scenario is in this case you were using the towels and the ice packs in well I mean I tried everything I possibly can in the very short amount of time and the changeovers but you know I think we both felt the effect of the heat and you know when you're playing on the hard court the heat is absorbed in the surface so you know down down there for us players we feel probably even more heat than you would feel on stands and of course running and yeah it's hard hard to put down your heart rates you know and and kind of control your breathing I mean it's it's it's very intense and the high level of tennis and intensity exerts a lot of effort and you feel you know you're spending a lot of energy and you don't have much time to recover so yeah so the icing ice bags on the head all over the body you know it's one of the ways to try to bring the temperature down cool yourself down a bit because you feel you're you know trapped in this heat inside and outside you know particularly today can you enjoy a match like that when you're out there or is it just hard grinding work and the enjoyment comes in the satisfaction of having won I actually said that to my team right after the match I said that this match was not an enjoyable match for me at all you know of course it's I'm proud to overcome the kind of challenge and obstacles and of course pleased with to win but it was not enjoyable at all it was it was really yeah suffering a lot of suffering in every aspect but you know you have days like that where you just have to accept it and face the the circumstances and try to make the most out of it