
{"id":501957,"date":"2025-10-17T05:39:30","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T09:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=501957"},"modified":"2025-10-17T05:39:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T09:39:30","slug":"djokovic-says-sinner-and-alcaraz-are-playing-close-to-perfection","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/djokovic-says-sinner-and-alcaraz-are-playing-close-to-perfection\/","title":{"rendered":"Djokovic says Sinner and Alcaraz are playing &#8216;close to perfection&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Novak Djokovic says he\u2019s embracing the challenge of being the hunter rather than the hunted as Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner continue to dominate the men\u2019s game.<\/p>\n<p>The 24-time Grand Slam champion, who once reigned unchallenged at the top of tennis, now finds himself chasing two young rivals who have captured the last eight major titles between them. Djokovic still holds a narrow 5\u20134 advantage in his head-to-head with Alcaraz but fell to the Spaniard in their most recent encounter at the US Open. Against Sinner, however, the Serbian has lost his last five meetings on the ATP Tour.<\/p>\n<p>This week, the 38-year-old faced Sinner again at the 6 Kings Slam exhibition in Saudi Arabia \u2013 an event featuring a lucrative $1.5 million appearance fee and a $4.5 million winner\u2019s prize \u2013 but was beaten comfortably 6-4, 6-2.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know that things are a bit different for me nowadays in terms of the level of tennis, my body, and it\u2019s not like when I was at my peak,\u201d Djokovic told The Arab following his defeat. \u201cI still try to play at the highest level and compete with the best players in the world. Jannik and Carlos are, without doubt, a few levels above all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">\u201cI\u2019m sorry you couldn\u2019t see a longer match today. It\u2019s his fault, not my fault. \u2026 It felt like a runaway train. He was smacking the ball from all corners. I was just trying to hang in there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Novak Djokovic showing love to Jannik Sinner \u2764\ufe0f <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SixKingsSlam?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#SixKingsSlam<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/qcStnxkWXx\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/qcStnxkWXx<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Netflix Sports (@netflixsports) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/netflixsports\/status\/1978911094967267702?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">October 16, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>As for his rivals, Djokovic offered high praise for their impact on the sport. \u201cJannik and Carlos are playing as close to perfection right now,\u201d he admitted. \u201cIt\u2019s quite frustrating to play them when they\u2019re at such a high level, to be honest. But at the same time, it\u2019s great to see \u2014 for our sport \u2014 that these guys are performing like this. Their rivalry is something truly exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Novak Djokovic says he\u2019s embracing the challenge of being the hunter rather than the hunted as Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner continue to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":501958,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[16732,17625,16740],"news_category":[16714,16715,14084],"gn_keywords":[17857,18543,17855],"acf":{"news_source":"","link_picture":"","announce":"The Serbian likes his new role of being the underdog against the new young stars in world tennis","video":["video"]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/501957"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/501957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":501959,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/501957\/revisions\/501959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501957"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=501957"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=501957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}