“Don’t Have Nadal There, But Novak Djokovic is There” – Top Coach Denies Less Competition at US Open 2020

Novak Djokovic is ready to return to the tennis court once again. This time he’ll hope for things to go more smoothly as compared to the Adria Tour he organized in June. The event saw players such as Borna Coric, Grigor Dimitrov, and Djokovic himself test positive for the coronavirus. Djokovic has now fully recovered and is raring to make a strong comeback at the US Open.

No quarantine – Novak Djokovic to play

Top tennis coach Darren Cahill believes Novak Djokovic is the favorite to win the US Open. The absence of some of his biggest competitors like Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, and Stan Wawrinka will help Djokovic. The biggest concern for many players was the quarantine restriction upon traveling to Europe from New York after the end of the US Open.

Djokovic himself had raised strong doubts about his participation in the US Open. He had said that he wouldn’t play the US Open if those rules persisted as they would affect his participation at the French Open. The Paris Grand Slam starts just two weeks after the US Open.

Cahill, who coaches Simona Halep, said that the quarantine restrictions have now been lifted for players who will play the US Open and then travel to Europe for the Rome Masters and the French Open.

The transition from hard courts to clay courts

In a recent interview, Cahill was asked for his views on the entire situation. He was also asked about how difficult he believes it will be for the same player to win the US Open and French Open. “I think the quarantine issue has been taken away now. So the players that compete in New York have got an exemption when they fly across to Rome. They won’t have to quarantine out there. So you stay in sort of a bubble from New York straight across to Italy,” Cahill said.

“Once we get to there, you have a week off before the French Open. Only two weeks between the end of the US Open and start of the French Open. Its incredibly tough to go from hard courts to clay. But the best players can do it. I think Novak the way that he started this year and I expect him to be in pretty good form in this US Open as well,” he added.

Can Novak Djokovic win the US Open?

“He will probably go in as the strong favorite to win this one. Then he, of course, he has to deal with Nadal at the French Open, But yeah, they (top players) can do it (win both events) for sure,” Cahill further added. If he can, indeed, win both the majors, Djokovic will be level with Nadal at 19 Grand Slam titles, just one behind Roger Federer’s 20 titles.

Men’s field at US Open still competitive Cahill

Cahill also said that on the men’s side, only nine of the top 100 players have so far pulled out. He said that this is anyway common at majors. He brought to light a similar incident a few years ago where top players did not play.

“Okay we don’t have Nadal there, but Djokovic is there. If you cast your mind back to a few years there was a bunch of tournaments in 2016, 2017 where we didn’t have Nadal, no Federer, no [Stan] Wawrinka, no [Juan Martin] del Potro, no Milos Raonic, [Kei] Nishikori, [Andy] Murray, [Marin] Cilic. There is a whole bunch of players that were missing big tournaments and the tournaments still went ahead. We still had a champion,” he added.

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