Novak Djokovic’s tactics questioned after shock Rome defeat

Dino Prizmic delivered a huge upset to Novak Djokovic at the Italian Open, ending his quest for a seventh title in Rome.

The world No. 1 looked on course for a routine win after taking the first set 6-2, but Prizmic turned the match around in impressive fashion, winning the next two sets 6-2, 6-4 to pull off the biggest win of his career.

That result marks Djokovic’s final match before heading to Roland Garros. It was also just his sixth defeat at this stage of a Masters event since the format changed in 2009 – and only one of those has come since September 2010.

Steve Johnson puzzled by Djokovic’s strategy in loss to Prizmic

Steve Johnson, who has seven ATP titles to his name, pointed out that Djokovic didn’t seem to be in top form physically.

“He was 18-0 in his first match in Rome over the course of his career, so obviously this is a surprising result for him to lose his first match,” Johnson said on the Nothing Major Show.

“He didn’t look great physically after the first set, I don’t know what it was.”

Johnson also noted that Djokovic seemed intent on keeping rallies short, which isn’t typical of his game style.

“It’s just strange to me,” he continued. “I think that he [Djokovic] must not have been feeling great physically because of the fact that in the third set he was losing some of the rallies which were 10, 12 or 14 balls.

“He was going for the winner more so than Prizmic was.

“That has never been done in the history of Novak Djokovic in his career, where he has pulled the trigger first where he has tried to shorten points, against someone like that.

“He has done it against Sinner and Alcaraz as of late and Rafas before him but it’s weird to see him shorten those points when it gets into those long and gruelling points because that’s what we’ve seen Novak do over the course of his entire career.”

How Novak Djokovic’s first Italian Open title played out

In the 2008 Italian Open, Novak Djokovic, then the third seed, moved past Steve Darcis, Igor Andreev and Nicolas Almagro to reach the semi-finals.

He then defeated Radek Stepanek to set up a showdown with Stan Wawrinka in the final.

Djokovic was too strong for Wawrinka on this occasion, winning 4-6, 6-3, 6-3.

“Well, I knew that he’s [Wawrinka] a difficult player to play against on this surface because if you look at his history of the results,” he said after the match. “He made his best results on this surface. So he’s a specialist and he didn’t have anything to lose.”

“But I tried to stay focused all the time because the role of the favorite in these kind of big matches is not easy to cope with you know,” Djokovic said. “I didn’t think that I’m going to play in the finals against a player who’s unseeded but obviously he deserved to be there.”

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