Novak Djokovic Exits 2019 US Open with Shoulder Issues

Novak Djokovic
Novak Djokovic at the Miami Open Tennis in 2018. Photo by Gustavo Caballero/South Beach Photo/REX/Shutterstock (9474924x)

The No.1 ranked tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic, won’t have a chance to defend his US Open title after all. Djokovic retired from the fourth round match against Stan Wawrinka and was effectively eliminated out of the tournament.

Djokovic lost the first two sets with results 6-4 and 7-5 and was trailing 2-1 in the third. At that moment he walked towards the umpire and told him he couldn’t continue the match due to a pain in his left shoulder.

Djokovic’s exit from the court ended up being followed by loud boos from the crowd, who felt they were robbed from watching a hugely interesting matchup.

“I’m sorry for the crowd. Obviously, they came to see a full match and just wasn’t to be,” – said Djokovic said at the post-game conference. “I mean, a lot of people didn’t know what’s happening, so you cannot blame them.”

The shoulder issues Novak Djokovic experienced aren’t new, as he was battling with the same injury during the second-round match. Although it seemed as though things got better in recent days, the injury got the best out of the 32-year-old and robbed him of the chance to defend the title he won in 2018.

Djokovic’s injury also means that we won’t get to see a potential re-match between him and Roger Federer. If both tennis players would have won their respective matches, they were set to meet in the semi-finals.

Now Wawrinka will try to get in Federer’s way, but he will have to beat Daniil Medvedev to get there. Federer, on the other side, faces Grigor Dimitrov in the next round.

Gunner's favorite movies are Pulp Fiction, Iron Man (just the first one), and every James Bond film ever made. He's learning TV and cinema and hoping to always enjoy movies as he does now.