Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Stefanos Tsitsipas recalled when, as an eight-year-old, he met Novak Djokovic at the Monte Carlo Masters. “See that walkway over there? The one next to the practice court. That’s where I met Novak Djokovic.
He was quite young and it was my first time here. I have very pleasant feelings coming here to Monte-Carlo. I actually have a picture with Djokovic here when he was eight years old. My father told him that one day we will play together.
He seemed crazy at the time, but here we are now. I have the photo somewhere. It’s in my house. I need to find it. There are no limitations in Novak’s game and we have seen it many times.” Tsitsipas will have a very busy tournament schedule as he is committed to Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Estoril, Madrid, Rome and the French Open.
“After a long period on hard courts, it’s been a while since I’ve been on clay. It was probably June of last year. It’s a different surface and with that different mentality. There are many things that I have to get used to.
I feel confident and that my game has developed since last year. I’ve learned a lot of things and I’m glad I brought them into the clay court season this year. There are still some things to improve and adjust faster.
I’ve said it many times, but the transition from hard to clay is the hardest of all. It’s a different ball game. You have to be more patient and as I said last year, it’s basically a game of chess. Having a great variety and knowing when to drop the line and stay on the court is very important.”
Nole Djokovic is training intensely
Novak Djokovic undertook a revolutionary change to his approach to the sport of tennis and life as a whole relatively early on in his career. “I was always struggling with respiratory problem, a kind of mild version of asthma and suffocation during the night for many years since I was seven years old.
For some reason, you know, as the time was passing by these allergies were gaining more intensity in terms of the reaction I felt. It was just getting stronger and stronger and the place where I felt that the most was always the tennis court.
That’s where you know, emotions kick in expectations, pressure, and when you mix it all together, you get a formula that is causing you to really experience some major health problems on the court. And because of it, I was retiring matches and I was it took me a lot of time recover.
So we started slowly taking off layer by layer and really going, deep into things that are related to my health and trying to understand what is the core of it. Of course, diet was one of the most integral parts of the problem and changing the diet was something that allowed me to get rid of the allergies and everything, and particularly gluten and dairy that I removed from my diet and refined sugar”.
