The incident happened after 10-time champion Djokovic, leading 6-3 4-2 at the time, saw a pacy return from world number 75 Van de Zandschulp go long for deuce.<\/p>\n
In a split-second, Djokovic casually hooked the ball left.<\/p>\n
“I don’t even think he knew the ball kid was there. But it was three inches from getting defaulted,” said former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash, who was analysing the third-round match for BBC Radio 5 Live.<\/p>\n
“He’s hit that in an area where nine times out of 10 is probably a default. He’s managed somehow to sneak in between the ball kid and the spectators to the left.”<\/p>\n
In New York little over five years ago, it was a clear-cut case.<\/p>\n
Djokovic took a ball out of his pocket and hit it behind him, striking the female line judge in her throat.<\/p>\n
It was an infamous incident which the Serb swiftly apologised for, saying it had left him “really sad and empty”.<\/p>\n
Given he felt he needed to apologise again in Melbourne, many will question whether Djokovic has learned his lesson.<\/p>\n
He also fell awkwardly during the third set and, shortly afterwards, received treatment for a blister on his right foot.<\/p>\n
But ultimately Djokovic won in two hours and 44 minutes, keeping up his record of not yet dropping a set at this event, and a lighter workload could prove critical for his hopes of winning standalone record 25th Grand Slam singles title.<\/p>\n
He will play Czech 16th seed Jakub Mensik in round four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The incident happened after 10-time champion Djokovic, leading 6-3 4-2 at the time, saw a pacy return from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-431826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431826","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=431826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}