Novak Djokovic’s Carlos Alcaraz disappointment in bid to make Spaniard pay

Novak Djokovic has spoken of his disappointment that he won’t be able to write another chapter in his close rivalry with Carlos Alcaraz at the Davis Cup on Friday when Serbia face off against Spain in the group stage. Djokovic took a few days off after winning the US Open for his 24th Grand Slam title, meaning he missed Serbia’s opening round-robin match against South Korea.

But Dusan Lajovic, Laslo Djere, Nikola Cacic and Miomir Kecmanovic got the job done for the Serbs with a 3-0 victory without their star man. Djokovic has now touched down in Valencia in time to play a part in Serbia’s next match against Spain.

As the home nation, Spain will be hoping to progress from their group but they’ll have to do so without world No 2 Alcaraz. The 20-year-old announced after his US Open semi-final defeat that he felt unable to compete at the Davis Cup as he needed to “stop and rest physically and mentally”.

That ruled out the possibility of another encounter between the top two ranked players in the men’s tour. And Djokovic has admitted that he was looking forward to the prospect of facing off against Alcaraz.

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“The truth is that I expected to play against Carlos here in Valencia,” Djokovic said. “He is a player who I respect a lot, whenever I have faced him they have been very hard matches, he is an incredible person and player.

“First with Rafa, now with Alcaraz, Spain has a great tradition in tennis. But hey, I’m from Serbia and these days I’m going to do everything possible to beat Spain,” he continued.

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The Davis Cup group stages are taking place across four cities – Bologna, Valencia, Split and Manchester – on September 12-17. The top two teams from each four groups will then progress to the knockout stages, which take place in Malaga on November 21-26.

Great Britain are in Group B with France, Switzerland and Australia and they got off to a good start on Tuesday. Jack Draper and Daniel Evans won their respective singles matches against Thanasi Kokkinakis and Alex De Minaur in two tight contests.

Australia did manage to pick up a win in the third match as the pairing of Matthew Ebden and Max Purcell beat Evans and Neal Skupski.

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