Novak Djokovic was beaten by gutsy qualifier Dino Prizmic on his return to action in the Italian Open second round.<\/p>\n
World number four Djokovic was playing his first match since 12 March – and more crucially his first of the year on clay – after missing several tournaments with a shoulder injury.<\/p>\n
A six-time champion in Rome, Djokovic started strongly but was laboured and looked to be struggling with illness in the second set.<\/p>\n
However, that is to take nothing away from Croatia’s Prizmic, who played bravely to overpower the Serb 2-6 6-2 6-4.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old, one of many players who counts Djokovic as his idol, wrote “Nole it was a pleasure” on the camera lens after the match.<\/p>\n
Djokovic, who received a first-round bye in Italy, said afterwards he will not play before the French Open begins on 24 May, where he will once again be chasing a standalone record 25th Grand Slam singles title.<\/p>\n
“I’m not definitely where I want to be to compete at the highest level and to be able to get far,” the 38-year-old said.<\/p>\n
“I don’t recall last time I had a preparation where I didn’t have any kind of physical issues or health issues coming into the tournament.<\/p>\n
“There’s always something. Kind of a new reality that I have to deal with.”<\/p>\n
Djokovic, a semi-finalist at Roland Garros last year, reached the final of the Australian Open in January, losing in four sets to Carlos Alcaraz.<\/p>\n
He will turn 39 two days before the French Open gets under way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic was beaten by gutsy qualifier Dino Prizmic on his return to action in the Italian Open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-631596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631596","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=631596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}