Another week in men's tennis is about to end, and the bottom line is that the certainties' era is slowly fading away. Having 2 ATP events, in Acapulco and Dubai, all top players geared up for playing. Except for Andy Murray who crossed the finish line in Dubai winning the title, the rest of stack failed in one way or another. Rafael Nadal reached the final act in Acapulco but seemed weak against Sam Querrey who eventually won the title. Other members of the so-called 'Big Four' had poor performances which bring up the level of the uncertainties to a new level.
Djokovic, not that long ago a wild beast with tremendous recovery skills, saw his first appearance in Acapulco ended by Nick Kyrgios. For the Serb champion, is perhaps one of the slowest starts in the past years.
Djokovic seems fragile
No further than last year, Novak Djokovic was a tennis machinery that breezed past every opponent. Along the way, some part of the gear went missing because the Serb is now a shadow of the former world no. 1 in the ATP ranking. Back in January, Doha seemed a wake-up call but then it was the Aussie upset and he is now back to square one. His overall game looks pretty much the same, but he indeed has a problem to maintain the pace for longer periods of time. When facing a weaker opponent he has a decent time frame to recover from the slump, but with top players, once he gets cornered, his accuracy suffers a lot.
Against Kyrgios, he failed to handle pressure. As a direct result, the number of unforced errors mounted allowing the young Aussie player to get some confidence boost.
Djokovic will have a harsh month
Last year, throughout March he clinched both Indian Wells and Miami Masters 1000 events. Now, as the defending champion, he must defend those titles and the burden of ranking points that comes along with.
For the time being, he looks in a comfort zone as the world no. 2 having few thousands points gap between him and the world no. 3 Stan Wawrinka. But we all saw how his 8000 points ahead of Murray vanished last year in what was a matter of months. Besides, Djokovic is a perfectionist and the way he plays at the moment must be frustrating for a guy who accomplished so much.
