Novak Djokovic is trying to defy the realities of the ageing process by pressing forward with his career into another season, with former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash suggesting he needs fate to play a hand in his push to win a record-breaking 25th Grand Slam title.
The 24-time Grand Slam-winning champion is tied with Margaret Court for the most Grand Slam wins in tennis history and he admits that the additional major title he is chasing is his last great challenge in the sport.
After failing to win a Grand Slam title since his 2023 US Open win and openly admitting he has lost some drive to continue in the sport, Djokovic’s future in tennis will be the subject of discussion once again if he fails to break the stranglehold of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner at the top of men’s tennis at this month’s Australian Open.
Djokovic is not playing a warm-up event ahead of his bid to win a remarkable 11th title in Melbourne and former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash has suggested player who will toast his 39th birthday in May needs bad luck or injury to befall Alcaraz and Sinner, as he does not believe the Serbian can beat the top two players in men’s tennis in back-to-back five set matches.
“He needs two of them to fall over, that’s the reality of it,” said Cash, in his role as an ambassador at the Bank of China Hong Kong Open.
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“So I’m very, very interested to see how he goes. It’s a fine balance at the end of your career to find where you are training hard enough to be fit enough to last two, even three, five set matches, but the not pushing it too far. So training hard enough to be able to last that, training too hard enough that you don’t get injured.
“You need to save enough in the tank so that you don’t get worn out and then not overtraining that you get injured before you go in there.
“When you are younger, you can keep pushing and while you get tired, if you play a five-set match when you are younger, you know you can bounce back quickly.
“As you get later in your career, it just wanes off. I mean, that’s just the reality of it. So for Novak to be able to still going is, is absolutely phenomenal.
“He’s always coming up with solutions to problems, so it will be really interesting to see how he goes at the Australian Open.
“Has he played enough matches? Has he trained hard enough? Is he saving his body just for the matches? And if so, will that work?
“I don’t see him beating Alcaraz and Sinner in back-to-back five-set matches and that’s his problem. He can get to the semi-final again, but then he is likely to have a familiar problem.”
Cash went on to suggest Djokovic is trying to defy medical science by taking on two great champions who are so much younger than him, with the physical advantages Alcaraz and Sinner have over him hard to breach.
“It’s a sort of a new, it’s slightly new field where he could go to every sports science person in the world,” added Cash.
“The medics would say, we don’t really know what a 39-year-old can do over two weeks of playing in a four and five hour tennis matches in heat. We just don’t know.
“They will say, go out, tell us what you did, how you did it, or tell us what you tried to and we can work out if it works or not. As a bit of a geek in that sort of field, fitness and how the body ages, I’m fascinated to see exactly how he goes in these long matches.
“The last couple of years would point to the fact that he can’t quite back it up and that’s completely natural, but we’ll see if Novak can find a solution.”
Pat Cash at the Bank of China Hong Kong Open
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