‘Novak Djokovic winning the 2024 French Open would be his greatest achievement ever’

Respected tennis analyst Mark Petchey believes Novak Djokovic winning the 2024 French Open would be “his greatest achievement ever in a single event.”

The former ATP player called for the men’s final at Roland Garros to be moved to Monday as he labelled Djokovic’s late finish against Lorenzo Musetti as “madness from a recovery point of view.”

Djokovic defeated world No 30 Musetti in a gruelling five-set contest lasting four fours and 29 minutes in the third round of the French Open.

The 37-year-old Serbian sealed a hard-fought victory at 3:07am on Sunday morning in the latest-ever finish to a match at the event.

The world No 1, who faces Francisco Cerundolo in the last 16 on Monday, is looking to win a fourth Roland Garros title and 25th Grand Slam crown. The tennis great is the defending champion, having downed Casper Ruud in the 2023 final.

6 tennis matches that finished after 3am: Andy Murray v Thanasi Kokkinakis at 04:05am

Petchey argued it would rank at the very top of Djokovic’s lengthy list of tournament victories if he were to triumph at the clay-court Grand Slam, given the circumstances of his match against Musetti.

“If @DjokerNole wins @rolandgarros it will be his greatest achievement ever in a single event. Madness to finish at 3am from a recovery point of view,” the former world No 80 wrote on X.

“When a tournament is struggling this much to catch up through no fault of its own, they should just call a Monday Final early so this doesn’t happen.”

Two-time Grand Slam champion Carlos Alcaraz gave his thoughts on the French Open night sessions and Djokovic’s late-night victory.

“Well for me, I don’t like night sessions, but it is not because of the crowd. I think the crowd in the night session is special,” the world No 3 told to the media after his fourth round win against Felix Auger-Aliassime

“But we, so late, have to do press conferences, physio and ice bath. We have to do a lot of things that are really important for the recovery for the next matches. Not only the last ball, we have a lot of important things to do.

“Novak, I’m sure he went to go to sleep at 6am, after the last one (point) finished at three, something like that. Three hours between the last point until he went to go to sleep. So it’s really difficult to recover when you are going to go to sleep so so late.

“I mean for me it’s much better to finish at six, having dinner in a really good restaurant, good food. Everything is better if you finish early.

“But the night session, it’s a real thing. We can’t change it but we have to adapt ourselves as much as or as better as we can to those matches.”

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