{"id":506195,"date":"2026-03-06T00:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T00:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/506195\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T00:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T00:27:14","slug":"novak-djokovic-makes-retirement-decision-at-indian-wells-with-two-reasons-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/506195\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic makes retirement decision at Indian Wells with two reasons | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novak Djokovic<\/a> touched down in Indian Wells and revealed that he will prolong his tennis career as long as two factors are still in play. The Serb, 38, reached the Australian Open<\/a> final earlier this year and defeated Jannik Sinner<\/a> in that run, before falling to world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>. His wait for a 25th Grand Slam title continues.<\/p>\n

But Djokovic has insisted that eclipsing Margaret Court\u2019s record is not the motivating factor for continuing to play. He is in the United States to play a professional match for the first time since his final defeat in Melbourne, facing either Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard or Kamil Majchrzak in the second round after receiving a bye, and opened up on his drive to compete.<\/p>\n

Djokovic believes that he has no reason to retire while he still has the \u201cfire\u201d and \u201cflair\u201d to beat the top players on the ATP Tour.<\/p>\n

“It was an incredible feeling to be able to beat Sinner in five sets in one of the epic matches that I played in recent times in Australia, and then have another great match with Carlos, who was just too good in the end,” Djokovic said.<\/p>\n

“For me, that has been a phenomenal result. So I have proven to myself primarily and to others that I can still compete at the highest level and beat these guys.<\/p>\n

“So my logic is why not keep going as long as I have that fire and flair and quality and the motivation to do that.”<\/p>\n

Djokovic remains third in the ATP<\/a> world rankings, despite playing fewer competitions than ever, as he focuses solely on Majors and allows his body time to rest between tournaments.<\/p>\n

And he claimed his position is not \u201ctoo bad\u201d and the joy of top-level competition still drives him to play, even as he approaches his 39th birthday.<\/p>\n

“I really enjoy the thrill of competition,” Djokovic added.<\/p>\n

“I enjoy still getting out there in front of the fans and being competitive. Still number three in the world, so I don’t think it’s too bad in terms of the ranking and results and performances.<\/p>\n

“So I’m still competitive. I still have that edge, and I’ll keep on going as long as I feel like it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic touched down in Indian Wells and revealed that he will prolong his tennis career as long…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[21198,230210,149588,230211,230209,433,189671,99,428,4563],"class_list":{"0":"post-506195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-atp-tour","9":"tag-djokovic-retire","10":"tag-indian-wells","11":"tag-indian-wells-tennis","12":"tag-motivation-to-compete","13":"tag-novak-djokovic","14":"tag-retirement-decision","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-tennis","17":"tag-tennis-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506195","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=506195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}