“You can probably judge by my voice. Look, it is what it is. You just have to try to deal with it and get over it and accept the circumstances and try to make the most of it.” And he doubled down after being pushed to four sets against Alexei Popyrin in the second round.
“Look, I haven’t been playing or feeling at my best the last, whatever, week or so. Yeah, it’s frustrating at times with kind of the level of tennis that I’m playing on the court and some uncharacteristic mistakes that I make. At the same time, that’s sport,” Djokovic confessed.
But Djokovic didn’t bring up the illness after losing to Sinner. “I want to congratulate Sinner for playing a great match, great tournament so far. He’s deservedly in the finals. He outplayed me completely today,” he said after the worrying defeat, admitting that he was “shocked with my level in a bad way” and hadn’t “really played close to my best” throughout the tournament.