{"id":466722,"date":"2026-03-09T22:37:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T22:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/466722\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T22:37:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T22:37:13","slug":"novak-djokovic-admits-im-not-enjoying-myself-in-brutally-honest-interview-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/466722\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic admits ‘I’m not enjoying myself’ in brutally honest interview | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novak Djokovic<\/a> confessed that he wasn\u2019t \u201cenjoying himself\u201d after surviving another scare in Indian Wells to beat Aleksandar Kovacevic. The No. 3 seed has been forced to go the distance in both his matches so far this fortnight. He came from a set down to beat Kamil Majchrzak on Saturday, and then dropped the second set against Kovacevic before bouncing back to win 6-4 1-6 6-4.<\/p>\n

The 38-year-old grew frustrated during the match, at one point pointing and yelling over at his box<\/a>, including coach Boris Bosnjakovic. He also stretched his leg and hip early in the second set, but recovered to reach the round of 16 for the first time in nine years.<\/p>\n

Djokovic won five titles here between 2008 and 2016, but since then has failed to reach the quarter-finals. This is now his best result in Indian Wells since 2017, but he\u2019s still struggling in the desert, and made no secret of it in a brutally honest on-court interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, another tough one. I mean, great performance from Aleks. We know each other. We speak the same language, obviously his whole family is Serbian. Great to see him doing well. We\u2019ve always had a great relationship, and I always thought he\u2019s one of the best talents we have out there, particularly the one-handed backhand, it\u2019s very rare nowadays,\u201d Djokovic said, first paying tribute to the world No. 72.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s played a great tournament so far, and today I knew, coming into the match, that if he serves well and he picks his spots in the box, it\u2019s going to be hard to break him. That\u2019s what happened, actually. He was serving extremely well until maybe one game in the first, and maybe the last game of the third set, of the match. He got a little bit tight, missed a few first serves. He got me into a position where I can win it, and I seized it.\u201d<\/p>\n

After his last match, Djokovic openly admitted he had struggled in Indian Wells over the last decade. While he\u2019s still been powering through this fortnight, he\u2019s not been having fun. The world No. 3 continued: \u201cI\u2019m not really enjoying myself at all times, to be honest!<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you are trying obviously to thrive in these kinds of conditions where you\u2019re facing an opponent that is playing almost lights out tennis, you get tight, you\u2019re not maybe swinging through the ball as well as you want to. But you\u2019re winning ugly, right? That\u2019s what counts in the end to get the W, and glad to be able to overcome the challenge today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things will only get more difficult for Djokovic, as he\u2019ll face either reigning champion Jack Draper<\/a> or No. 19 seed Francisco Cerundolo for a spot in the quarter-finals. The Serbian superstar has also entered the doubles draw here, teaming up with Stefanos Tsitsipas<\/a>. They are set to face No. 3 seeds Marcelo Arevalo and Mate Pavic later on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic confessed that he wasn\u2019t \u201cenjoying himself\u201d after surviving another scare in Indian Wells to beat Aleksandar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[87467,158429,167350,30732,167351,6766,101,118,872,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-466722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-aleksandar-kovacevic","9":"tag-bnp-paribas-open","10":"tag-djokovic-vs-kovacevic","11":"tag-indian-wells","12":"tag-kovacevic-vs-djokovic","13":"tag-novak-djokovic","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-tennis","16":"tag-tennis-news","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466722","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=466722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}