Djokovic Explains Changes After Return From Injury, World No. 1 Ranking Reachable

Novak Djokovic is the toast of the men’s tennis tour at the moment after the Serbian made a stunning comeback from a long-term injury absence during the ongoing 2018 campaign.

The Serb missed the second half of the 2017 season due to an elbow injury and needed another surgery that kept him out for over a month after making a comeback at the Australian Open in January this year.

Djokovic returned to action in March at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, and has since gone from strength to strength in the last eight months. He struggled initially with a semifinals appearance during the clay court season being his best result until the start of the grass court season in June.

The former world number one made the final at the Queen’s Club tournament, before going on to win his 13th Grand Slam title at Wimbledon. He followed it up with wins at the Cincinnati Masters and made it 14 major wins with a dominating performance at the US Open in New York in September.

Djokovic has revealed he made a number of changes to his game and also his racket to ensure he does not have trouble with his elbow. The Serbian took his time to come to terms with the changes, but is now looking back to his best and it a known fact that — Djokovic in top form is almost unbeatable.

“I worked very hard to be able to regain confidence on the court after that I had surgery in February,” Djokovic said talking about journey from injury to Grand Slam winner in 2018, as quoted on Tennis World USA.

“It took me several months to be able to get my game together. I have made some compensations with my game especially with my serve, I made certain changes with the racket so it took a little bit of time to get used to the new racket and serve and not to have the elbow disturbing me. … By the end of the clay-court season, I started playing at the level that I wanted to play on and the grass-court season was fantastic. Of course, the recent results in Cincinnati and New York made me very proud, so I can't complain,” the Serbian added.

Djokovic’s stunning comeback since Wimbledon has seen him vault up in the ATP Tour men’s singles ranking and is currently number three in the world behind long-time rivals Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, who are one and two respectively.

But the Serb has a great chance to finish the year as the top ranked player. He is currently 1815 points behind Nadal, but with the Spaniard not playing in this week’s Shanghai Masters, the gap will get closer.

Nadal will lose 600 points by not playing the event in China, and if Djokovic wins, he will be just 215 points behind the world number one. And there are two other major tournaments — the Paris Masters and the ATP Finals in London — before the season concludes, which allows Djokovic to close the gap and overtake the Spanish tennis legend.