{"id":19604,"date":"2025-07-24T03:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T03:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/19604\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T03:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T03:54:09","slug":"he-was-told-that-he-had-the-worst-forehand-in-the-top-100-on-the-atp-tour-despite-having-a-win-over-novak-djokovic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/19604\/","title":{"rendered":"He was told that he had the worst forehand in the top 100 on the ATP Tour despite having a win over Novak Djokovic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Not many players on the ATP Tour can say they have beaten Novak Djokovic before.<\/p>\n

Djokovic is a 24-time Grand Slam champion<\/a>, but he is currently in a less dominant stage of his career.<\/p>\n

After losing in the Wimbledon<\/a> semifinals, there has been a lot of speculation about Djokovic\u2019s potential retirement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is not the first year that Djokovic<\/a> has struggled for form, with the Serbian losing to a player in 2018 who was told he had one of the worst shots on the ATP Tour<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"NovakPhoto by Manuel Mazzanti\/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesBrad Gilbert claimed Benoit Paire had the worst forehand on the ATP Tour in 2018<\/p>\n

Djokovic was stunned at the Australian Open<\/a> in 2018, undergoing elbow surgery shortly after his fourth-round defeat.<\/p>\n

However, this did not help him at his next tournament of Indian Wells<\/a>, where Djokovic was beaten in the first round by qualifier Taro Daniel.<\/p>\n

Djokovic was hoping to return to winning ways at the Miami Open<\/a>, where he would play world number 47 at the time, Benoit Paire.<\/p>\n

They had only played once before, with Djokovic winning that match in straight sets, but the Frenchman would get revenge on this occasion.<\/p>\n

Paire would stun defending champion Djokovic<\/a>, who had won his last 16 matches at the Miami Open, in straight sets.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This was a third consecutive defeat for Djokovic, who has only repeated this unwanted feat once<\/a> since then.<\/p>\n

It would also bring an end to the coaching relationship between Djokovic and Andre Agassi<\/a>, which did not even last a year.<\/p>\n

Paire would lose his subsequent match against another Serbian, Filip Krajinovic, and would be on the wrong end of a brutal comment later that year.<\/p>\n

At the 2018 edition of the US Open<\/a>, an ESPN<\/a> commentator who would go on to become the coach of Coco Gauff, Brad Gilbert<\/a>, was asked who he thought had the worst forehand from the top 100 on the ATP Tour.<\/p>\n

Gilbert<\/a> did not dodge this question and instead said, \u201cMaybe, Benoit Paire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BenoitPhoto by Alex Grimm\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

These comments came just after Paire had lost to Roger Federer<\/a> in the second round of the US Open.<\/p>\n

What is Benoit Paire doing in 2025?<\/p>\n

Paire, who has a career-high ranking of world number 18, would not be a possible answer for Gilbert anymore, as he is currently nowhere near the top 100 of the ATP rankings.<\/p>\n

The sometimes controversial Paire, who was once barred from representing France at the Olympic Games<\/a> due to his behaviour, has since plummeted down the rankings.<\/p>\n

Paire is now the world number 628, which is his lowest ranking since 2009.<\/p>\n

The now 36-year-old almost exclusively competes on the ATP Challenger Tour in 2025, where he has won only three of his last 14 matches.<\/p>\n

However, following his first round defeat at the Challenger tournament in Troyes, France, Paire revealed that he would be taking some time away from the court to recover from physical issues.<\/p>\n

He wrote on Instagram, \u201cNo more tournaments as long as I\u2019m in pain\u2026 No return date, it will depend on my body, but nothing for a good while.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had 12 injections in a year and a half, and I feel that if I push through, something will really give out. So I\u2019ll come back only when I feel capable of stringing together points, matches, and tournaments.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not many players on the ATP Tour can say they have beaten Novak Djokovic before. Djokovic is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[6733,16627,49,48,2083,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-19604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-atp","9":"tag-benoit-paire","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-novak-djokovic","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}