{"id":309930,"date":"2025-11-26T12:40:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T12:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/309930\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T12:40:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T12:40:30","slug":"tennis-star-names-best-out-of-djokoivc-federer-and-nadal-tennis-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/309930\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis star names best out of Djokoivc, Federer and Nadal – Tennis – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marcos Baghdatis has identified Novak Djokovic as the most challenging rival he faced during his 16-year professional tennis career. The 24-time Grand Slam winner prevailed in all eight encounters between 2007 and 2015, including a grueling five-hour Wimbledon quarter-final clash.<\/p>\n

Djokovic stands as the only elite player Baghdatis failed to defeat, despite the Cypriot recording victories over Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer in 2010 – making him the sole player to beat both while they held the World No 1 ranking. This distinction leads the 40 year old to give the current Olympic champion a slight advantage over his peers in the “Big Three”.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Tennis365, Baghdatis said: “I would pick Novak Djokovic, just because of the reason that I never beat him, but it’s very hard to pick.” Djokovic recently made headlines for saying he wasn’t great friends with Nadal and Federer.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

He also referenced Andy Murray among the elite quartet before citing David Ferrer, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Juan Martin del Potro, Marin Cilic, Stan Wawrinka and Tomas Berdych as additional world-class competitors from his era.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on Djokovic, Baghdatis said: “I think, whenever I played Novak, [they were] pretty close matches. That’s my thinking; maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I remember.”<\/p>\n

“But I think I once got a nice beating out of him, and it was in Indian Wells. It was a 6-1, 6-2.”<\/p>\n

That contest a decade ago actually concluded 6-1, 6-3 and marked their final meeting.<\/p>\n

Baghdatis explained: “I came off the court, and I felt the guy gave me a lesson, and I never felt like that with another player. I never felt like that with Roger or with Rafa.<\/p>\n

“Even when I was younger, and I played Roger, I always felt like, ‘next time I can beat him’. I always felt that.<\/p>\n

But with Novak it was… I didn’t have that feeling, especially after that match. “.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marcos Baghdatis has identified Novak Djokovic as the most challenging rival he faced during his 16-year professional tennis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,3592,964,965,85,747,6414],"class_list":{"0":"post-309930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-novak-djokovic","11":"tag-rafael-nadal","12":"tag-roger-federer","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tennis","15":"tag-tennis-section"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}