| Wednesday, 25 June 2008 Written by Helen Gilbert Novak Djokovic crashed out of Wimbledon in straight sets to someone ranked 72 places below him yet still warmly embraced the man who had ruined his dream of winning the title. That may seem unusual but there was a reason. The man was Marat Safin and the two players go back a long way. They know each other well off court, they have practised together but, perhaps more significantly, Novak considered Safin his idol when he was a junior. “I looked at him as one of the greatest players, one of the idols,” Djokovic said after the match. “I admired the way he plays. At the time when I was a junior he was the top of the world. I used to practise with him, because we had then and still have the same manager. I have a lot of respect for him. Maybe that played a key role in the match.” It helped that Safin, who is famed for losing his head, remained calm throughout the match. According to Djokovic, Safin was “mentally there” and the Serb admitted to making some uncharacteristic unforced errors. “He was playing with not much unforced errors from the back. But I wasn’t doing anything to hurt him. My serve, even when I had the high percentage of the first serve, was going on his racquet. No angles, no precision whatsoever.” The number three seed also described one of his mistakes as waiting for Safin to make errors. “I shouldn’t just wait for the mistakes. I was supposed to go for the shots and play the aggressive style that I always play. But it wasn’t my day.” Djokovic described the loss as “disappointing” but was determined not to dwell on it. “I just have to take the best things out of it and use it for the future,” he said. For now his plans involve returning to “home sweet home” and having a little break from tennis. And despite his loss, the Serb still appeared to be gunning for his former idol. “Safin has his ups and downs,” he said. “But he’s still a great player. I mean, he’s still not too old. He’s playing well. He wants to step it up and try to get far in a major. This is a good way to start.”
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Safin Shocks Djokovic
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