Novak Djokovic loses his third match of the year in the quarterfinals of the ATP 250 tournament in Banja Luka against his countryman Dusan Lajovic. The Serbian has built many of the successes obtained in his career on the ability to always make the difference in the important moments of the match; today, however, he has never recorded when the score required it.
Only in the first set, in fact, Djokovic threw away ten break points out of eleven and committed a large number of gratuitous errors. The trend did not reward him even in the second set, as evidenced by the five break points and the three unrealized set points.
The Belgradean lost his serve in the third game by hitting a painful double fault and brought the match back to a draw only thanks to a bad forehand free kick calibrated badly by Lajovic at 4-3. A few minutes later, Djokovic did worse than his opponent and sent a trivial forehand several meters over the baseline.
Lajovic didn’t tremble and took the set home. In the second part of the match, neither of them lost their serve and only the tie-break wrote the end word. Djokovic sensationally failed three set points and left the initiative to his rival on match point faced without success.
Below the highlights:
The results in Barcelona
Carlos Alcaraz has shown that he still needs time to get back to his best form. The former world number one won the second consecutive game without convincing from a performance point of view and reached the semifinals of the ATP 500 tournament in Barcelona by beating Alejandro Davidovich Fokina 7-6(5), 6-4.
Alcaraz thwarted twice the lead break gained in the first set and also played the tie-break with indecision. A very balanced decisive tie-break from a clumsy forehand missed by Davidovich Fokina at 5-6. Even in the second half of the game, Alcaraz continued to do and undo the good capitalized in response.
Both held their serve without worries from the sixth to the ninth game, when Davidovich Fokina suddenly came out of the match and gave Alcaraz a double fault and a not impossible forehand at 30-30. Stefanos Tsitsipas also advances to the semifinals on Spanish clay-courts.
The Greek is increasingly taking on the semblance of his original version and has dominated the game far and wide with Alex de Minaur. The Australian lost for the ninth time out of nine against his bete noire Tsitsipas. It will be the Greek who will face Lorenzo Musetti in the penultimate act of the tournament.
