Djokovic has built an entire career \u2013 arguably the greatest ever seen \u2013 on upsetting the status quo.<\/p>\n
When he first emerged as a force in the late 2000s, he was the outsider looking to break up the duopoly of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.<\/p>\n
Nearly 20 years on, Djokovic finds himself squeezed out at the top of the men’s game by Sinner and Alcaraz.<\/p>\n
Despite his advancing years and scaled-down schedule, Djokovic is still the world’s third-best player.<\/p>\n
There were glimpses of his quality against Alcaraz, such as a vintage backhand winner down the line in the first set, as well as the ball-striking on his way to winning a 27-shot rally in the second.<\/p>\n
But ultimately, Djokovic does not quite have the speed or endurance to sustain his highest level against Alcaraz and Sinner.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz served well, and backed it up with aggressive groundstrokes early in the rallies, to overpower Djokovic in the key moments.<\/p>\n
Former world number one Djokovic has proved this year that he still has enough left to reach the semi-finals of all four majors, but hitting 30 unforced errors indicated the pressure he feels against Alcaraz and Sinner.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, he will never believe he cannot win – even when the odds are stacked against him.<\/p>\n
“They’re just too good, they’re playing at a high level,” said Djokovic.<\/p>\n
“I ran out of gas. I’m happy with my level of tennis – it’s just the physicality of it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Djokovic has built an entire career \u2013 arguably the greatest ever seen \u2013 on upsetting the status quo.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-135722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135722","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=135722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}