There have been many notable moments in the career of Novak Djokovic, but the Serbian can add two more to his list following Team Serbia’s dramatic 2-1 victory against Team France at the ATP Cup.

Firstly, the Serbian’s 6-3, 6-7(5), 10-3 doubles victory alongside Viktor Troicki earned his country a spot at the Final Eight in Sydney. But Djokovic will also remember the match for a different reason, after losing a point for the first time in his career by Video Review.

Video Review ?#TeamFrance use VR to overturn a foul smash off the Djokovic racquet.#ATPCup pic.twitter.com/1x6cvkqWll

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With Troicki serving at 6-3, 2-3, (30/30), Djokovic dismissed Nicolas Mahut’s return with a forehand volley to earn game point. But Mahut and Edouard Roger-Vasselin were convinced the Serbian had touched the ball before it had travelled across the net.

“It seemed to me, at first, that it was kind of just in the middle. Not our side. Not their side,” said Djokovic. “But then, the chair umpire, after repeating the video a couple of times, he was right.”

The situation reminded Djokovic of the moment he fell into the net while hitting another forehand volley during the fifth set of his 2013 Roland Garros semi-final loss to Rafael Nadal.

“I already lost a very important point in my career against Nadal in a similar way like that in the semi-finals at Roland Garros,” said Djokovic. “So I had a little bit of a déjà vu there and got frustrated because of that.”

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But the frustration of a game point becoming a break point did not affect the 77-time tour-level titlist. Djokovic and Troicki recovered from the position to hold serve, delighting much of the pro-Serbia crowd inside Pat Rafter Arena.

“It is what it is. We bounced back, won the next two points,” said Djokovic. “That got myself, I think Viktor and the crowd a little bit hyped up. I think after that the energy of the crowd was amazing. Also, the French team were lifting their team up and it was a big battle.”

Serbia will face Chile in its final group stage tie on Day 6 before travelling to Sydney for the Final Eight. The Group A winners will face the eighth team to qualify for the Final Eight in the day session on 10 January.

Alexander Bublik marked his Qatar ExxonMobil Open debut with a notable victory on Monday, defeating seventh seed Adrian Mannarino 6-3, 6-4 to advance to the second round.

The 22-year-old landed 10 aces and broke Mannarino on three occasions at the 2019 ATP 250 Tournament of the Year. Bublik enters the 2020 ATP Tour season after a breakout campaign last year, highlighted by runner-up finishes at the Hall of Fame Open and the Chengdu Open.

The Kazakh will face Aljaz Bedene for a spot in the quarter-finals, following the Slovenian’s 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 comeback win against 2019 Next Gen ATP Finals qualifier Mikael Ymer.

Fernando Verdasco needed 89 minutes to book his place in the second round, battling past fellow Spaniard Pablo Andujar 6-4, 6-3. The 2017 semi-finalist will meet sixth seed Filip Krajinovic or Kyle Edmund in the second round.

“I’m happy with the way that I played,” said Verdasco. “I still think that I can play a little bit better… But in general, I’m happy with the way that I played the whole match.”

Corentin Moutet also started his 2020 ATP Tour season with a win, saving each of the seven break points he faced to move past Tennys Sandgren 7-6(3), 6-4. Moutet advances to a second-round clash against fourth seed Milos Raonic.

Novak Djokovic was still a couple hours away from playing at the ATP Cup in Brisbane, but already the Serbian was showing his emotions for his country.

Midway through the first set of Serbian Dusan Lajovic’s match against Lloyd Harris of South Africa, Lajovic had a chance for a break point but missed a forehand approach. Djokovic slapped his leg and leaned back in Serbia’s Team Zone.

By now, the 32-year-old knows well how to manage his emotions and balance his competing roles at the inaugural 24-team event, which is playing played in Brisbane, Perth and Sydney and moves exclusively to Sydney on Thursday for the Final Eight.

Djokovic and other No. 1 singles players play the second match of their ATP Cup tie, meaning their pre-match routine can – and often does – include supporting their teammate, the country’s No. 2 singles player, who plays before them.

But it takes some thinking, as Djokovic acknowledged, to make sure you’re supporting your teammates while sticking to your own pre-match routine and not getting too emotionally involved as a supporter.

“It’s kind of a balance between the two, really. Because it’s a team competition, you’re always kind of finding that additional energy and strength and motivation that is probably always different in individual tournaments, because it’s all about you,” Djokovic said. “And here it’s, even though there’s that factor of individual and elements of an individual tournament, it’s still a team competition.”

The World No. 2 stayed through 12 games of Lajovic’s match against Harris before heading to the locker room to warm up. His opponent that night, Kevin Anderson, followed the same routine, offering a fist pump and encouraging words to Harris before exiting the court in Pat Rafter Arena.

The South African has years of team tennis experience, having played collegiate tennis at the University of Illinois in the U.S. and on Team World at the 2018 Laver Cup in Chicago.

“I just find that balance pretty comfortably… that balance of getting out there and being excited, but obviously realising that you still have to play afterwards,” Anderson said.

“At the end of the day, yelling at the top of my lungs is not going to maybe help Lloyd too much. It’s just being there, being supportive. I think just more time and days before the match is probably more valuable than, arguably more valuable, than just being out there.”

Although both Djokovic and Anderson watched much of the first singles match, others have different strategies that have worked for them throughout the years. World No. 1 Rafael Nadal, for instance, watched only three games of Roberto Bautista Agut’s singles match on Saturday before leaving to prepare for his debut at the ATP Cup in Perth.

“I am old in these situations. A lot of experience… We know how to manage the situation,” Nadal said. “If things are not going well, it’s not because we lose energy in moments we should not.”

Croatia’s top singles players want to be so locked in they watch even fewer than three games with their teammates in the Croatia Team Zone by the baseline.

Borna Coric watched none of Marin Cilic’s match, and vice versa, and why change something that works: Croatia is 2-0 in Sydney.

“If I’m playing first, he’s not there, and I know it and I’m OK with it. And also he knows that I’m not going to be on his match, obviously,” said Coric, who overcame Cilic as the country’s No. 1 singles player last year.

Cilic, however, came after his match to support Coric and watch the 23-year-old face Austria’s No. 1 Dominic Thiem. Coric pulled off the upset against the World No. 4 for his first Top 10 win in more than a year (0-3 in 2019).

“It was really nice for him that he came to my match afterwards, because his support means a lot to me,” Coric said of Cilic. “He’s older, and still, even though if he’s the No. 2 at the moment, I feel like he’s our leader. So it did mean a lot that also he came. Obviously he was playing a very long match, but that just shows his character.”

Djokovic and other No. 1 singles players also make it a point to support their countrymen who are playing doubles and finishing up the tie, but Djokovic’s movements during the first singles match aren’t always as methodical as they may seem.

For instance, if Lajovic would have gone to a third-set tie-break with Harris, Djokovic would have trotted back on court and stood alongside his teammates to root for his countryman.

“You care, you’re passionate, you want to be out there for your teammate,” he said.

Dennis Novak earned one of the biggest wins of his career on Monday at the ATP Cup in Sydney, upsetting World No. 25 Guido Pella 0-6, 6-4, 6-4 in two hours and 14 minutes to give Austria a 1-0 lead over Argentina.

The World No. 105 pushed former World No. 3 Marin Cilic to three sets on Saturday, leading the Croat to say that Novak was playing at a “great level”. The Austrian maintained that against Pella, holding all 10 of his service games across the final two sets to stun the lefty.

“I felt not really good in the beginning. It was a huge difference [from] two days ago, the conditions.
I mean, the first set looks quite easy for him,” Novak said. “After the first set I went to a toilet break with Thomas, and I came out and changed a little bit my game and fought back in the game. I think at the end I played really good tennis.”

Novak admitted that Austria’s captain, former World No. 1 Thomas Muster, gave him a “rough speech”. But it was clearly productive, with Novak storming back against Pella.

“He just told me to start moving better, hitting the ball, going for it, not waiting for him to miss,” Novak said. “That’s what I changed. I think I stepped in the court, and I played some really good shots.”

This is Novak’s second-biggest victory by FedEx ATP Ranking, having defeated then-World No. 19 Lucas Pouille in five sets at Wimbledon two years ago. It is Novak’s 14th tour-level victory.

After the first set, it appeared that victory would be difficult. Novak won only 39 per cent of his service points in the opening set, getting broken three times, while winning only three return points. But Novak did not shy away from the occasion, going after his shots to give countryman and longtime friend Dominic Thiem an opportunity to close out the tie against Diego Schwartzman.

It’s never easy to know what an opponent will do on the tennis court. But at the ATP Cup, the Strategy Room helps point players in the right direction.

Former doubles World No. 1 and 23-time tour-level doubles titlist Jamie Murray took ATPTour.com inside Sydney’s Strategy Room to explain how various statistics and insights into matches could make the difference in critical moments at this inaugural 24-team competition.

“I really like this stuff. Sometimes you can get too bogged down in it and then forget actually you need to go out and play and you’re worrying too much about what the other guys might do,” Murray said. “You’ve still got to focus on what you can do and what you can control, because at the end of the day you might think that the guy’s going to serve there, but he’s got free choice to do what he wants to do. [But] you can definitely use it to your advantage, 100 per cent.”

Murray noted that there are some things he may look at to check progress on a part of his game that he is working on. And while it is important to look at standard stats such as first-serve percentage or first-serve points won, that’s not necessarily the most valuable aspect of the Strategy Room, or scouting in general.

“If I’m looking at the opponents that I’m going to play next, it’s more trying to find out almost like what they don’t do,” Murray said. “So if they play regular formation and they never cross, then I’ll know that I can keep returning crosscourt. Or one player, if he never serves wide on the deuce court, then I know I only have to protect the T serve and the body. So it’s things like that that kind of give you an edge.

“Maybe I’d filter second serves, where these guys are serving second serves. If they’re only serving in the body for example, then I know I don’t have to cover a wide serve, so I can cheat my position a bit. Or when they’re doing I-formation, is there a way that they always cover the cross-court return, or are they always covering down the line? Are there certain patterns that they like to play?”

The Strategy Room could also work in reverse to help players make sure they’re not getting too predictable. For example, if someone visited and saw that another player poaches crosscourt returns 85 per cent of the time in the ad court, that could play into their strategy.

“A big part of what we’re taught in Britain and our philosophy is to be unpredictable and not to be doing the same things over and over again,” Murray said. “When you’re out there, if it’s 4-4 deuce and you know that the guy never serves wide to you so you’ve only got to cover two serves instead of three, that’s a huge advantage and you can anticipate it a bit.”

In general, Murray’s coach does a lot of the scouting for matches to come. But if he’s set to face opponents he never has before, he’ll try to watch them on YouTube or television to learn their tendencies. Having advanced analytics like those being provided in the Strategy Room makes preparation even easier.

“For a doubles team, if you had access to that [information from the Strategy Room] the whole year, you can definitely use it to your advantage. It’s still obviously about getting out there and executing what you’re trying to do,” Murray said. “But it definitely helps if you know for sure certain plays that teams do or that they don’t do. That definitely gives you an edge when you’re going into matches.

“In doubles, the margins are so small and matches are deciding all the time by two or three points. So if you have that little extra edge, it can really help.”