Novak Djokovic is the favorite to win Miami Open, says expert
Speaking on The Tennis Podcast the expert Catherine Whitaker gave her predictions for the Miami Open. Whitaker believes Novak Djokovic is the favourite to go all the way and win his seventh title there although he lost to Philipp Kohlschreiber in the Indian Wells third round. “I do think there is quite a lot of pressure on him in Miami now to not lose early, not to necessarily go out and win the thing", said Whitaker. "Although having said that, he is I think my favourite to do that. I think 42 days is a little bit too long to sort of come back and click right into gear. It was one of those irritable and flat Djokovic performances [against Kohlschreiber] for a short period, a year to 18 months ago we’d got quite used to seeing. Suddenly they were erased from our mind as we saw this machine like Djokovic again."
Djokovic opened his run against Bernard Tomic. On the differences between the past and current tennis, Whitaker added: "I think there is a brief reversion to what we were seeing 18 months ago, but no cause for concern. Back in the day there used to be an awful lot of tennis played on grass. We’re never going to go back to that and nor should we, I don’t think anybody is advocating for that necessarily, I think a little bit more grass would be more welcome. I think the goalposts have definitely moved in the last five to ten years, largely because of Roger Federer. The goalposts have definitely changed. You would expect them to change with the advancements in training and physiotherapy and all of the bells and whistles that come with being a rich and successful athlete. It’s a very knotty issue, Nadal seemed to be suggesting there was a way of keeping hard courts by making them less hard. Something sort of springier or softer.”
from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2YkN6jF
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