{"id":124689,"date":"2025-09-01T11:01:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T11:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/124689\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T11:01:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T11:01:09","slug":"novak-djokovics-neck-bothers-him-during-a-us-open-win-he-will-face-taylor-fritz-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/124689\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic’s neck bothers him during a US Open win. He will face Taylor Fritz next"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Novak Djokovic<\/a> was cruising along with a big early lead in his U.S. Open<\/a> fourth-round match on Sunday night when his neck started bothering him. That didn’t stop Djokovic from dominating 144th-ranked qualifier Jan-Lennard Struff 6-3, 6-3, 6-2 to reach his record 64th Grand Slam quarterfinal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat gives me a lot of encouragement right now, and positivity, is the way I played tonight,\u201d Djokovic said. \u201cBest performance of the tournament so far. Hopefully I can keep that going.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Djokovic was ahead 4-0, 15-love when he hit a nicely angled volley winner to go up 30-love in that game. The 24-time Grand Slam champion immediately grabbed at the back of his neck and started turning his head.<\/p>\n

The 38-year-old Djokovic kept trying to stretch his neck or flex his right shoulder between points, and he went on to drop that game and the next one, too. But he soon regained the upper hand against Struff, who beat Frances Tiafoe in the previous round and was trying to get to a major quarterfinal for the first time.<\/p>\n

After improving to 8-0 against Struff, Djokovic now carries a 10-0 head-to-head record into his quarterfinal on Tuesday against 2024 U.S. Open runner-up Taylor Fritz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect players that never won against me to come out on the court and try something different and try to make me feel maybe uncomfortable and play more aggressive, or not, whatever,\u201d Djokovic said. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s going to be any major changes with Taylor, because, obviously, you stick to the kind of a game plan that got you to the quarters, and you know what your strengths are … which for him obviously is serve and forehand.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The No. 4-seeded Fritz, the last American man in the bracket, moved into the quarterfinals with a 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 victory Sunday against No. 21 Tomas Machac of the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing is, I think it\u2019s spanned over so many years. The first almost seven or eight times I played him, I probably just wasn\u2019t a good enough player to really have that much of a chance unless I have the best day ever and he has a bad day,\u201d Fritz said. \u201cOnly the last couple times we\u2019ve played, I think, I\u2019ve been this just better player that can, I\u2019d say, compete and have chances.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Djokovic finished off that opening set against Struff, he was visited by a trainer for treatment during the ensuing changeover. Djokovic was given a massage to his neck and shoulder.<\/p>\n

If he was still in discomfort, his play wasn’t really affected at all. During the break after that set, Djokovic had his right forearm massaged. But again, there were no signs of trouble when the ball was in play.<\/p>\n

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Djokovic had trainers work on him earlier in the tournament, too, including for blisters on a foot<\/a> in the first round and for a lower-back issue in the third<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He’s won four championships in New York, most recently in 2023.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP tennis: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Novak Djokovic was cruising along with a big early lead in his U.S. Open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[77025,79766,433,99,2072,428],"class_list":["post-124689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-jan-lennard-struff","tag-neck","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-sports","tag-taylor-fritz","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}