Djokovic Reveals Why ‘Flawless’ Performances Aren’t As Easy As They Look

When the No. 1 player in the ATP Rankings calls his performance ‘flawless’, his level was probably pretty high.

Novak Djokovic was playing so well in Friday’s Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships quarter-finals against World No. 24 Lucas Pouille that he took a 6-1, 4-0 lead against the Frenchman in just more than 30 minutes. The top seed, who triumphed in 50 minutes, admitted that those days don’t happen often.

“You always hope it can happen regularly and it can happen in every match that you play, but it doesn’t always work,” Djokovic said. “So it does depend on various things, not just the way you hit the tennis ball, but the way you feel physically, mentally, emotionally. It all has to be aligned for you to have a performance like this, so I guess this was the day for me.”

Djokovic was clear that a performance like his against Pouille did not happen by accident. Although he does not find a level that high every day, he puts in the work to position himself to be able to do so.

“Every day you wake up and you’ve got to earn that feeling. It’s not just coming to you naturally,” Djokovic said. “You’ve got to practise. You’ve got to understand what works for you, the routines, the overall feeling on the court, how to not just step into that zone, but also stay there for the entire match.”

Players knocking off a few consecutive winners that draw ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ from the crowd happens relatively often. But maintaining that level for the duration of a match against the best players in the world is far more difficult.

“That’s probably even a bigger challenge,” Djokovic said. “So I do enjoy [being at that level], but I try at the same time not to really get carried away by being so overjoyed with everything — which is great because this is exactly how you want to feel — but at the same time, you want to stay focussed on the next point. That’s a right state of mind.”

The first serve is a weapon that can deliver free points or set players up to aggressively finish off a point. But Djokovic limited Pouille to only 48 per cent of his first-serve points won.

“It was definitely one of the best matches I’ve played this year. Best one of this week [and it] came at the right time. I thought Lucas was playing really well the first couple of matches in this tournament,” Djokovic said. “I took away the time from him. I served well, served many aces, returned a lot of his serves back and just used every opportunity to come in. Just overall, a really flawless performance.”

Most performances for players on the ATP Tour are average by their standards. So the way Djokovic performed in Colosseum Friday was not something that was lost on the Serbian.

“I do enjoy it as much as my team or people that cheer me on or people that are in the tennis stadium. When you experience that perfect flow state where everything really works, whatever you do, that’s where you want to be, basically, in that state of mind,” Djokovic said. “That’s where you want your game to be every single time you step on the court to play a match.”

It’s been a tremendous debut in Tokyo thus far for Djokovic, who is trying to win a tournament on his main draw debut for the 10th time, with the last occurrence coming at 2017 Eastbourne. And it hasn’t just been the 32-year-old’s tennis, but his overall comfort in the city both on and off the court.

“I’m enjoying my time here very much. It’s the first time [I have played] in [the] Japan Open and I do feel very comfortable. People are very kind to me and to my team. I get a lot of support on the court as well, which is always very much needed and something that you hope for,” Djokovic said. “So of course in these kinds of conditions — which are also quite suitable to my style of the game, the speed of the court and the weather — everything is really perfectly matching myself on the court and off the court for me in order to be at the top of my game and to perform as well as I did today.”