Last week we saw a spectacular meltdown from tennis World No. 1 Novak Djokovic as he lost his his semi-final at the Shanghai Masters. While he could not control his errors, spraying ground strokes and missing routine drop shots, what stunned the fans was uncharacteristic behaviour on court: he smashed his racket into bits after losing the first set later grabbing a towel from a ball girl to sweep up the pieces himself and ripped his shirt open in anger during another point. The Serb’s frustration even spilled outside
the court as he complained in his post-match presser that the chair umpire, with whom he had argued over line calls and a time violation, “was the star of the show... That’s what he
wanted to be today.”
It’s not that Djokovic has not lost temper on the court or
smashed his rackets; it’s the manner in which he exploded
more akin to a combustible youngster like Nick Kyrgios, who
has been banned by the ATP for eight tournament weeks and
fined $25,000 (£20,560) for his behaviour
- including “lack of best efforts”
in the same tournament. But
nobody was surprised that Kyrgios
tanked his match. It was a very Kyrgios
thing for Kyrgios to do.
The enigmatic Kyrgio’s case has bewildered
the tennis world but it is
a problem of an individual dealing
with the pressures of professional
tennis today. On the other hand, Djokovic has already found
his place among the modern day greats. He has worked tirelessly,
putting in hours of practice to become the beast that
has ruled the tennis world after he took over the reins from the
imperious Roger Federer and the tenacious Rafael Nadal.
But after his recent failures, the Serb has talked repeatedly
about trying to find calm on the court and rediscover his inner
joy for the game after a gruelling couple of years that has
left him mentally exhausted. The bruising nature of the men’s
tour, with a predominating baseline style that leads to long
rallies, and the increasing emphasis on physicality, has taken
its toll on the elite athletes in tennis.
To address this burnout issue, the tennis bosses are planning
a shortened scoring system with more predictable timing and
length that would also make the sport more TV-friendly. It
means reducing the length of matches, including potentially
using no-ad scoring and super tiebreaks for singles, similar to
what’s used in doubles matches. While many players have opposed
the changes, with Nadal saying it goes against the “values”
of the sport, the change in sport is inevitable. Djokovic on
his part is more open to the proposal. In the Serb’s own words,
the sport needs to “come together” and see “the way we want
to improve and evolve” to stay current and modern.
