Novak Djokovic and Nina Stojanovic won a tricky 1st round match against Marcelo Melo and Luisa Stefani (6-3 6-4).
Marcelo Melo is an excellent doubles player, and he had high hopes for a good run in the mixed doubles at the Olympic Games. Eventually, the Brazil team hit the Serbian barrage.
The Controversy
Unfortunately, there was a bit of a controversy after the match when Marcelo Melo said that he was utterly unimpressed by the behavior of Novak Djokovic, who was accused of being a bit too aggressive for hitting Melo’s back. It’s worth noticing that Novak Djokovic immediately apologized before hitting the Brazilian.
Melo commented:
“Novak surprised me but in a negative way. There was no need for that. Two days ago he filmed himself speaking about Brazil and Brazilians, our energy, and now he is behaving this way. He had a smash directly in my back which he didn’t have to play that way. But OK, this is tennis and everybody is trying to play it the way he wants. I personally would never play that way.”
Djokovic in Tokyo, ranking, and results in 2021
Now the world no.1, Novak owns a composed 37-3 record in 2021. Djokovic is playing at the moment in Tokyo where he managed to beat Hugo Dellien 6-2 6-2, Jan-Lennard Struff 6-4 6-3 and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina 6-3 6-1.
Novak Djokovic will take on the world no.69 Kei Nishikori in the quarter on Thursday at 5:00 pm on Centre Court. Their current head to head is 16-2 for Djokovic.
Novak has won 4 titles in 2021 at the Australian Open, in Belgrade, at the French Open and in Wimbledon. Djokovic was the runner-up in Rome (Internazionali BNL d’Italia).
Novak won 85 titles in his career: 48 on hard courts, 17 on clay courts, 13 on indoor courts and 7 on grass courts. (See the list of his titles)
Nina Stojanovic in 2021
At the moment ranked no.92, Stojanovic played her last match on the 26th of July when she was defeated by world no.19 Maria Sakkari 6-1 6-2 in the 2nd round in Tokyo (draw).
This season the Serbian has a 16-16 record. Nina Stojanovic’s best performance of the current season was getting to the semifinal in Nottingham.
Luisa Stefani in 2021
Ranked no.802, Stefani played her last match on the 4th of May when she lost to world no.110 Greetje Minnen 6-4 3-6 6-4 in the 1st round of the Open 35 De Saint Malo Saint Malo (draw).
At present, during this year Luisa has a 1-2 win-loss record.
Nina Stojanovic and Luisa Stefani have never played each other till now in top competitions.
