‘Most Protected Player Ever’- Tennis Fans Outrightly Bash ‘Classless’ Novak Djokovic for His Angry Rant at a Spectator in Monte-Carlo

Norwegian tennis star, Casper Ruud recently tasted one of the biggest victories of his career at the SF of the Monte Carlo Masters. The 25-year-old defeated the world number 1 tennis star, Novak Djokovic by 6-4,1-6,6-4. With this victory, Ruud has now secured his second ATP Masters 1000 final and first since 2022. For Novak Djokovic? Well, he’s still trophyless this year. Yesterday, Djokovic not only lost the match against Ruud but was also seen losing his cool and yelling at the crowd during the match. This has now raised a new controversy.

Fans have already started to spit venom at the Serbian tennis star for being rude to a spectator during the match. Here is what the fans are saying on social media surrounding that incident involving Novak Djokovic.

“He can never inspire the next generation” – Fans raging at Novak Djokovic for his rude behavior during the SF match in Monte Carlo

It was a do-or-die match for both the players in Monte Carlo. Intensities were high and so were the decibels! Ruud won the first set, and Djokovic won the next. Everything was set perfectly for a thrilling third-setter match. But the disturbance started to pop up when Djokovic was seen losing his cool after multiple failures in getting his first serve right. Despite winning the second set, the Serb was broken early in the third set. He never really got his grip on the match after that.

After missing a regulation forehand from the baseline, he turned his attention to a fan in the stands who had apparently been disturbing him during the match and yelled, “Shut the f*** up!”. After that, the chair umpire urged the fans not to call out during a rally. But he didn’t issue any verbal warning to Novak Djokovic.

Relating to that incident one of the fans shared that controversial moment from the match. He wrote, “Literally impossible to like this guy” in the captions. Within seconds, thousands of fans came in to showcase a similar rage with a comment under his post.

A fan said sarcastically that it was really a class act.

Another one called Novak Djokovic as the Most protected player. He added that anyone else would have got a point penalty if not the game penalty for such a rude act towards the crowd.

Some of the fans labeled it to be a completely classless act. 

Others highlighted Holger Rune’s incident where he got penalized for what seemed to be nothing compared to this incident. They’re now glad that Novak Djokovic has lost this match. 

A few of them went a little further and stated that it’s very hard to like Novak Djokovic. Being ranked world number 1, winning 24 Grand Slam titles, and whatnot, but still, Novak Djokovic is probably one of the most controversial players in the tennis world.

However, this isn’t the first time when Novak Djokovic has been caught in the middle of all actions surrounding his behavior towards the crowd. It happened at the Davis Cup last year and even in the AO this year.

“Come say that to my face” – Djokovic yells at the crowd at the 2024 Australian Open

During Serbia’s Davis Cup tie against Great Britain in the QF last year, Novak Djokovic was seen disturbed by the British fans. Later on, he was even seen telling them, “Learn how to respect players. Learn how to respect people, you shut up, you be quiet.” After that in the AO, this year he yet again called in for action when he lashed out at one of the fans screaming, “Shut the f*** up!” during the first-round match against Dino Prizmic.

A similar incident followed it during his next match against Australia’s Alexei Popyrin. Djokovic got involved in a fiery exchange with a fan during the match. He was even seen pointing at him and telling him “Come say that to my face.” Later on, when he was asked about the incident, he said, “Not the best atmosphere to play in, to be honest. People basically made noise between the first and second serve the entire match.“

He went on to add, “What really frustrated me is when somebody heckles me in the crowd. I told him to say it to my face but there was an absence of courage in that moment.” Can you remember any other such incidents involving Novak Djokovic?