Sinner: 'I Try To Learn, Even If It's Tough To Accept'
Jannik Sinner may not have claimed the win against World No. 1 Novak Djokovic Wednesday at the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters, but he didn’t walk away empty handed. There were many lessons learned in his 6-4, 6-2 defeat to the Serb.
“Obviously what I see is that he is defending better than me when he’s coming in the run,” said the 19-year-old World No. 22. “We have to learn there. We have to serve a little bit better. Everything. I think the biggest part where I have to learn, but I knew already, is to understand the right situations in every match, to don’t go too much, don’t go too slow, all the rest.”
Monte-Carlo resident Sinner was competing in just his fourth ATP Masters 1000 tournament. On the heels of his final run at the Miami Open presented by Itau, he’s knocking on the door of the Top 20 in the FedEx ATP Rankings. Moving forwards, he already has his eyes on a rematch against Djokovic.
“The focus is always about improving. That’s what I’m doing. That’s what I’m trying to do. Try to learn from this match today as well, even if sometimes it’s tough to accept,” he said. “But there is only one way to improve. I have the good team. I have the right people behind me who know what you have to do. I hope I play once more against Novak.”
The #NextGenATP star got off to a promising start against Djokovic, claiming the first break of serve, but soon surrendered control of the match.
“Today, I think I started quite well,” said Sinner. “Then at 2-1 [on] serve, I didn’t play [the game] well. Then he started to move me a little bit more. After I tried to play a little bit deeper, trying to move him.
[WATCH LIVE 1] “I think what I missed were maybe one game each set I played a little bit not in the right way, which in the first set was 2-1, in the second set it was 4-2 when he was serving. When he went [up] 5-2, I didn’t play well that game.“But I think the rest [of the match] was not a bad match from my side. At some point, especially in the second set, the level was very high.”