Rediff.com« Back to articlePrint this article

Tennis has yet to fulfill its full potential, believes Djokovic

October 14, 2016 13:09 IST

World number one Novak Djokovic, who believes that tennis "has yet to fulfill its full potential", has called for the sport to "improve and evolve" after the women's tour signalled a move towards new scoring formats.

Speaking at the Shanghai Masters, Djokovic said all sports were doing everything they could in order to get their sport to the highest possible level and fulfill their potential.

"I think tennis has yet to fulfill its full potential. I think we are at a good state at the moment, for sure... but we still have a lot of room to get better," Sport24 quoted the Serbian as saying.

The world number one also believes that different scoring methods were worth considering making the game easier to follow on the television sets whose matches vary wildly in duration.

Women's Tennis Association (WTA) chief executive Steve Simon has said he was considering using super tie-breaks and no-ad scoring, which are already used in doubles, in singles events too.

Djokovic's comments are though in contrast with that of Rafael Nadal, who said that the game thrived on long and "dramatic matches that become emotional".

"Tennis has values that we need to follow, in my opinion," Nadal had earlier said this in Beijing.

However, the world number believes that there are some of the rules which are worthy of consideration and some are not.

He has, therefore, called on a joint effort to figure out the way they want tennis to improve and evolve, because in his opinion, everything else was going in that direction.

Source: ANI