After Novak Djokovic's Australian Open win on Sunday night, his coach Goran Ivanisevic took aim at the 'unfairness' of press coverage surrounding the world No.1.
"He needed this victory so badly," he told reporters post-match.
"There is somebody upstairs who sees all this unfairness with a lot of media and people they doing to him.
"Coming here, he spent 42 days quarantine. Again, he tried to help the players. Again, he's only him. It's his fault, like everybody else attacking him. Nobody else to attack, so let's attack Novak.
"It was not easy to deal with all this criticism, to deal with the injury, to deal with everything. But, you know, he showed the world again how great, how big he is as a tennis player."
Despite the media attention and the injury concerns, Djokovic was able to comfortably claim his ninth Open crown - leading Ivanisevic to compare his client's form at Melbourne Park to that of Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros.
"This is his tournament. Like Rafa has his French Open, Novak has his Australian Open," he said.
"Nine times, unbelievable. It just shows you this victory is even sweeter that I know what he has, I know what kind of emotions and pain he went through in the last week."
When asked what the most impressive aspect of Djokovic's win was, Ivanisevic gave an all-encompassing answer.
"Everything," the former Wimbledon winner said.
"How he stayed calm, how he did everything exactly what we talked about before the match."
The 49-year-old also praised the form of Djokovic's opponent Daniil Medvedev, who had won 20 straight matches before the final.
He said the key to victory was being aggressive on Medvedev's serve, something Djokovic did masterfully, winning nearly 40 per cent of the points on his opponent's serve and converting seven of 11 break points.
"He did it unbelievable," Ivanisevic said.
"You can see Daniil kind of lost it in the second set after that break. Actually after that double-fault, 15-Love, he just went somewhere.
"With Daniil he can switch from bad to good, from good to bad. Honestly, I thought is a pretty even match before the match started. But I said, 'This is the final. This is Novak's court. Novak never lost a match here in the final'. You could see that that help a lot in the end."
The win was Novak's 18th major, leaving him two behind Nadal and Federer. His coach said there was no reason why he couldn't be the top dog by the end of the year.
"He wants to win. He wants to break the records. He wants to perform and compete like he did," Ivanisevic said.
"Now the chase is beginning. The chase is there and it's great.
"He is a champion. He always finds the way how to perform the best. He did it here, especially with all this crazy things what was happening ... he showed again how strong and tough he is in the head and prove everybody wrong."
from WWOS https://wwos.nine.com.au/tennis/djokovic-singled-out-by-media-coach-says/48304cf2-cc61-47e6-b0e0-35f3914bfd6d
0 Comments