{"id":283866,"date":"2025-11-26T06:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T06:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/283866\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T06:24:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T06:24:08","slug":"i-played-against-djokovic-federer-and-nadal-one-of-them-stood-out-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/283866\/","title":{"rendered":"I played against Djokovic, Federer and Nadal – one of them stood out | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marcos Baghdatis has named Novak Djokovic<\/a> as the toughest opponent from his 16-year professional tennis career. The 24-time Grand Slam champion won all eight of their matches between 2007 and 2015, the second of which was a five-hour-long Wimbledon<\/a> quarter-final.<\/p>\n

Djokovic is the best player Baghdatis never beat, having recorded wins over Rafael Nadal<\/a> and Roger Federer<\/a> in 2010, the only person to beat both while they were World No 1. That is why the 40-year-old gives the current Olympic<\/a> champion an edge over the other two in the “Big Three”.<\/p>\n

Baghdatis told Tennis365<\/a>: “I would pick Novak Djokovic<\/a>, just because of the reason that I never beat him, but it’s very hard to pick.” He also mentioned Andy Murray<\/a> as one of the top four before naming David Ferrer, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Juan Martin del Potro, Marin Cilic, Stan Wawrinka and Tomas Berdych as other very high-level opponents around at the time he played.<\/p>\n

On Djokovic, Baghdatis added: “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.” That match ten years ago actually finished 6-1, 6-3 and was the last time they played each other.<\/p>\n

Baghdatis continued: “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

To be the first to receive the latest tennis news, join our WhatsApp community<\/a> or tennis newsletter<\/a><\/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. But with Novak it was\u2026 I didn’t have that feeling, especially after that match.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marcos Baghdatis has named Novak Djokovic as the toughest opponent from his 16-year professional tennis career. The 24-time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[64353,6766,6767,6768,101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-283866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-marcos-baghdatis","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-rafael-nadal","tag-roger-federer","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}