Becker: 'The tennis world is divided between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal's fans'

Even though a few days have passed, discussions continue on the disqualification of Novak Djokovic. The World number 1 had to leave the US Open due to a shot from a line judge, which forced the leaders of the New York Slam to make an extreme decision during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta. In an exclusive interview with Tennis365, former Serbian coach Boris Becker expressed his opinion on what happened, making an interesting comparison with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. The 17-time Grand Slam champion knew he had a gluttonous chance to mend the gap from his eternal rivals and remain unbeaten in this weird 2020.

Becker on Novak Djokovic

“Novak Djokovic doesn’t like it, nobody would like it, he is a people person most of all. He’s somebody that knows where he’s from, he’s a very proud Serbian, he does a lot of charity work back home, he has a huge charity, a huge foundation, and people don’t talk about that side, they talk about the street fighter, the one that breaks rules, that he’s a difficult guy. I don’t think he’s a difficult guy to be with, he’s a champion, he’s got character, he wants to win of course, but sometimes he gets the wrong end of the stick" - Boris Becker explained. “Look, he is a human being always and human beings are not perfect. He plays with his emotions, that is one of his character traits, he is strong and when he plays emotional, but when he gets too emotional he can lose his temper. We’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again, you’ve seen it with me and you’ve seen it with other players, it’s just what it is. I wonder whether all the disturbances of the last week, with the new players union he had started and I remember he tried to call the New York governor (Andrew) Cuomo a couple of days ago to get permission for matches, a lot of things that take away from your concentration, so maybe that was the reason why he lost his cool. But ultimately he is not perfect, things like that can happen, period" - he added. “I don’t think so and that’s a very valid point. I think the tennis world on the men’s side is divided between [Roger] Federer fans and [Rafael] Nadal fans, and then comes Djokovic as somebody who crashes the party. There are many things he gets criticised about and today is another storm after he was correctly defaulted for the mistake of hitting the ball at the lines person. He apologised first of all to the woman, he apologised to the lady involved, he apologised to his fellow players, so he took responsibility for his mistake, but nobody is perfect" - the German concluded.

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/3hgcAqs