Novak Djokovic is entering the twilight of his sensational tennis career, and time is therefore ticking on his efforts to win a record-breaking 25th Grand Slam title.
However, he knows this better than anyone.
The 39-year-old insists that he plans to keep playing until the 2028 LA Olympics, and so has a handful of major tournaments left before then.
But, with each passing year, his powers are unsurprisingly waning.
Andy Roddick has now insisted that because of this, Novak Djokovic has actually started to follow a trend that Serena Williams also curiously did at the back end of her career.
Andy Roddick compares Novak Djokovic to Serena Williams
While chatting on the Quick Served version of his podcast, the American pundit reviewed what he felt was a solid performance from the Serbian.
Roddick claimed: “Scratchy in the first set, eventually he was able to get his racket, kind of found a groove in sets three and four. Made a lot of returns.
Do you feel more or less confident that Novak Djokovic can win Roland Garros after that performance?
“I thought we were going to see Novak detonate. He was up a break early in the fourth set and let it go. Missed a drop shot wide, which is like a big no-no. Even the goats make mistakes sometimes, but he gets through that one.
“Not unexpected. I don’t know anyone who expects him to, you know, come out in the straights, but kind of found his footing.”
However, he also argued that it was hard to make much from the performance: “I don’t know that it’s a real read on where he’s at, because it doesn’t involve a lot of long points, it doesn’t involve, this matchup, a lot of movement, getting out of the corners, doesn’t involve a lot of ball striking.
“It’s basically Novak rolling through service games, and then trying to stick save returns and then just kind of move Mpetshi Perricard a little bit. So, Novak gets through, but I don’t know that we got a full read on where he’s at.”
Roddick concluded by referencing Serena, adding: “You know, he’s kind of entering that phase of his career where not dissimilar to Serena at certain parts in her career, where he’s gonna like he plays himself into shape during slams, which is crazy for the rest of us to think about as like an option, but, you know, here we are again.”
Novak Djokovic will have to hurry to play himself into form at Roland Garros
Roddick is correct in his assessment that Djokovic will be trying to play his way into form.
However, he only really has one more match before he needs to hit form, given the quality of his potential third-round opponent.
Who will win this year’s French Open?
The second Slam of the year…
Next up for the 24-time Grand Slam champion is Valentin Royer, playing another Frenchman in front of the Parisian crowd.
Should he bypass him, one of Joao Fonseca or Dino Prizmic will await him next.
This represents a huge banana skin for Djokovic, either facing the young Brazilian with a point to prove or the young Croatian who beat him in Rome earlier this month.
