{"id":231498,"date":"2025-10-22T09:03:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T09:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/231498\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T09:03:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T09:03:06","slug":"novak-djokovic-issued-retirement-warning-after-injury-fears-tennis-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/231498\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic issued retirement warning after injury fears – Tennis – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennis legend Novak Djokovic has been urged to hang up his racket<\/a>, despite the Serbian star insisting he has no intention of stepping away from the sport anytime soon.<\/p>\n

The 38 year old recently declared his motivation stems from achieving longevity and dismissed any retirement talk<\/a>. However, former world No. 1 doubles player Rennae Stubbs, who previously coached Serena Williams, has now argued “there is no reason” for the 24-time Grand Slam champion to continue battling it out on tour.<\/p>\n

Djokovic has endured a mounting series of physical complications throughout this season. He was forced to withdraw from his Australian Open semi-final in January and has subsequently found it challenging to match the intensity of rising stars Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, particularly during grueling five-set Grand Slam encounters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The world No. 5 also encountered difficulties at the recent Shanghai Masters, requiring medical attention on multiple occasions throughout the tournament and seemingly sustaining a hip problem during his semi-final loss to Valentin Vacherot, who was ranked beyond the top 200.<\/p>\n

Djokovic subsequently withdrew from his third-place playoff encounter against Taylor Fritz at last week’s Six Kings Slam exhibition, informing spectators that he needed to resolve his physical concerns before potentially concluding the season with a few additional tournaments.<\/p>\n

Stubbs now believes the challenges will only intensify for Djokovic, as she questioned his desire to continue competing on tour. Speaking on her podcast, she remarked: “He’s just breaking down all the time.<\/p>\n

“If there was a legit injury [vs Vacherot in Shanghai], which I’m assuming it was in the first set… he looked pretty good in the second set. But the same thing keeps happening [in the] latter parts of tournaments for him.”<\/p>\n

Though Stubbs recognizes that Djokovic remains capable of advancing to the semi-finals of Majors and Masters 1000 tournaments, the Australian indicated that it might not be sufficient.<\/p>\n

“Novak just doesn’t look like he has enough on the ball anymore against some of these players. I mean, look, he’s the greatest player of all time. He has all the records, but at some point, and I’ve spoken about it for months actually, maybe a year or two, Father Time catches up with you and he just looks like he doesn’t quite have enough on the ball,” she added.<\/p>\n

DON’T MISS<\/p>\n

“He’s not imposing himself enough. He’s not serving as great as he used to when he won a lot of these big tournaments and big matches. And at some point, it catches up with you, and you just wonder, how long is he going to do this for?”.<\/p>\n

“He’s title-hunting. He’s not trying to win another Masters 1000 or a 500. He’s got all the records. There’s no reason for him to play anymore. So I just think, mentally, it’s such a grind.”<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Djokovic holds a different perspective. Although he may not be securing major titles currently, he draws inspiration from fellow athletes who continue competing at age 40.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the recent Joy Festival in Riyadh, he declared: “Longevity is one of my biggest motivations.<\/p>\n

“I really want to see how far I can go. If you see across all the global sports, Lebron James, he is still going strong, he is 40. Cristiano Ronaldo, Tom Brady played until he was 40-something years old, it is unbelievable.<\/p>\n

“They are inspiring me as well, so I want to keep going, that is one of the motivations I have and then I want to also live to see, live meaning keep on playing professionally, what is coming for our sport, and I am super excited about it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennis legend Novak Djokovic has been urged to hang up his racket, despite the Serbian star insisting he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,2083,82,593,1706],"class_list":{"0":"post-231498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-novak-djokovic","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-tennis-section"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231498","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=231498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}