Count on Novak Djokovic to find the injustice in a straight-sets win.
Djokovic was in the middle of a tense moment Tuesday at the Italian Open, glaring at Cameron Norrie when Norrie hit him in the left leg with an overhead — after Djokovic had given up on the point and turned his back to the net.
Djokovic, still the best and No. 1 ranked player in the world at the age of 35, went on to an easy 6-3, 6-4 victory, reaching the quarterfinals of the clay-court tournament for the whopping 17th straight year.
“I did watch the replay when he hit me. Maybe you could say he didn’t hit me deliberately. I don’t know if he saw me,” Djokovic said when asked about his stare back at Norrie, via The Guardian.
“I mean, [peripherally] you can always see where the player is positioned on the court. The ball was super-slow and super-close to the net. I just turned around because the point was over for me.”
But as it turns out, that was just the start of the complaints from Djokovic, who took issue with Norrie’s mid-match medical timeout and escalated his issues with the world No. 13 from Great Britain to a question of “fair play.”
“It was not so much maybe about [the overhead], but it was maybe a combination of things,” Djokovic went on. “From the very beginning, he was doing all the things that were allowed. He’s allowed to take a medical timeout. He’s allowed to hit a player. He’s allowed to say ‘Come on’ in the face more or less every single point from basically first game.
“Those are the things that we players know in the locker room it’s not fair play, it’s not how we treat each other. But again, it’s allowed, so…
“I got along with Cameron really well all these years that he’s been on the tour. Practiced with each other. He’s very nice guy off the court, so I don’t understand this kind of attitude on the court, to be honest.
“But it is what it is. He brought the fire, and I responded to that. I’m not going to allow someone behaving like this just bending my head. I’m going to respond to that.”
Djokovic, who has won five of the past seven majors in which he has competed while staunchly remaining unvaccinated, will be the favorite when the French Open begins Monday.
With a 23rd career grand slam title, he would break a tie with Rafael Nadal for the most of all time.
Djokovic also will be eligible for this year’s US Open after the federal government’s vaccination mandate for foreign air travelers ended earlier this month.
Djokovic has not won the US Open since 2018: In 2019, he retired due to injury while two sets down in the fourth round; in 2020, he was disqualified during a fourth-round match for striking a linesperson with a ball; in 2021, he faltered one win shy of a calendar-year Grand Slam in the final against Daniil Medvedev.