2023-05-09 16:19:00
After circumstances and injuries prevented them from being together in one tournament, Serbian Novak Djokovic and Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz will be in the same tournament for the first time this season when they play Rome for the Thousand Masters in tennis, which starts on Wednesday.
Due to a muscle injury in his right thigh, Alcaraz was denied the Australian Open, the first of the four major championships, while Djokovic missed the Indian Wells and Miami Masters 1000 due to his refusal to receive the coronavirus vaccine.
These two things prevented the players from being in the same tournament since the start of the season, but they will play together in the Rome tournament, which will see Djokovic relinquish the top of the Professional League rankings once Alcaraz plays his first match in the Italian capital without even having to win it.
And after the season started strongly by winning the titles of the Adelaide Tournament and then the Australian Open, Djokovic’s results declined, so that the 35-year-old’s career ended at the semi-finals of Dubai at the hands of Russian Daniel Medvedev, then the price of the final of the Monte Carlo Masters 1000 tournament at the hands of Italian Lorenzo Musetti, all the way to the quarter-finals. Bosnian Banja Luka Tournament by his compatriot Dusan Lajovic.
With this, the Serbian reaches the Rome tournament, which last season won its title for the sixth time in his career, and he is in a shaky position a few days before playing the French Roland Garros tournament scheduled between May 29 and June 5.
On the other hand, Alcaraz, who celebrated his twentieth birthday on Friday, is entering the Rome tournament for the first time in his career and is in his best condition after winning Sunday the Madrid Masters 1000 title for the second season in a row.
The Spaniard thus won his second title in a row, after the Barcelona tournament, and the fourth this season out of 5 final matches, raising his tally to four titles in the 1,000-point Masters tournaments after the Miami and Madrid tournaments last year and Indian Wells this year.
And he confirmed his strong return from injury by achieving his twenty-ninth victory this season in 31 matches, and the nineteenth in 20 matches on dirt ground, in a good indication before playing the Roland Garros tournament, in which he reached the quarter-finals last season.
1-Zero Alcarase
And after retaining his title in Madrid, he will need to play a single match in Rome to regain first place in the world rankings from the veteran Serbian, who last year became the youngest world number one in history.
And it is certain that he reached the final five times in the six tournaments he played since his return from injury, which will make him a strong candidate to win the Rome title in his first participation in the stadiums of the Italian capital.
The Spaniard revealed that he is working hard to achieve consistency in his performance and results, saying: “Our goal is not to test a fluctuating level from one session to another, but to maintain a certain level all the time. I have succeeded in that so far. I am very happy.”
Three weeks before Roland Garros, all eyes will be on Djokovic to see his level, which was far from usual in his recent posts.
The Serbian begins his career with the young Frenchman Luca Ash (85 in the world), who was also his first opponent in the Banja Luka tournament, or the Argentine Thomas Martin Echeverri (61 in the world), with the grandfather starting later with potentially difficult confrontations, and successively against the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov (33 in the world), Britain’s Cameron Nouri (13), Denmark’s Holger Rohne (7) or Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime (10), down to Italy’s Yannick Senner (8) in the round of four.
As for Alcaraz, he begins his first adventure in Rome by meeting his compatriot Albert Ramos (72 in the world) or Italian Francesco Passaro (126), provided that the difficulty begins from the final price with a possible confrontation with the Croatian Borna Coric (16), who reached the semi-finals of the Madrid tournament, then Last year’s Greek runner-up Stefanos Tsitsipas (5) in the quarter-finals, with Russian Andrei Rublev (6), German Alexander Zverev (22) and another Russian, Daniel Medvedev (3), the potential tests in the round of four.
In the event that the two players succeed in overcoming the obstacles awaiting them, the final will be only the second date between them after the semi-finals of the Madrid tournament last year, when Alcaraz emerged victorious 6-7 (5-7), 7-5, 7-6 (7-5).
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