Seven top ATP stars who have criticised the Masters format<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cMy personal view, I love the one-week events,\u201d the Italian said. \u201cI love it when you see that the tournament in Monaco, for example, you have for Monte Carlo, you have this one-week event, and you have the first-round matches which are incredibly good. And if one good seeded-player loses, the next match is an incredible match still, and you have the quarter-finals and you know exactly when you buy the tickets.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have the quarter-finals and then you have the semi-final, which is Saturday, and then you have finally Sunday. And now I lost a little bit of the view of when does actually a finalist [play], because it used to be always Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, here [in Cincinnati] it\u2019s Monday. In Toronto, it\u2019s Wednesday or Thursday. So it\u2019s difficult even for us players. We lose a little bit of the days of the week, I would say.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite his complaints about the schedule, Djokovic is delighted to be competing in Rome again after missing last year\u2019s event. The Serbian has won the event six times already in his glittering career.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fantastic to be back,\u201d he said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t wait to compete again. I wanted to return to the Tour sooner, but unfortunately I had to wait a little longer to gradually improve my physical condition and prepare for Rome.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a city and a tournament that I truly love and where I\u2019ve achieved great success for many years. My ultimate goal on this surface is Roland Garros, where I try to get there playing my best tennis, but I still want to do well here too, even if my expectations are lower.\u201d<\/p>\n
Djokovic has been drawn in the other side of the draw to Sinner, so he will fancy his chances of reaching a first Masters final since the Miami Open<\/a> in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic has returned to the ATP Tour at the Italian Open, but he has already vented his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-657660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657660","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=657660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}