Serbian ATP Cup Team Captain Viktor Troicki has underlined that they won't be taking any team for granted in Group A but they are confident in their chances since they have world No. 1 Novak Djokovic. Serbia, that won the inaugural edition of the ATP Cup, was drawn into Group A with Canada and Germany.
Serbia will open their title defense on Tuesday, when they meet the Canadians in the opening day of the event. 2019 Monte Carlo Masters runner-up Dusan Lajovic will take on Milos Raonic in the opening rubber of the tie, before Djokovic clashes against rising Canadian star Denis Shapovalov.
「It’s a really tough group, maybe the toughest group out there. [There are] really tough players on both Germany and Canada,」 Troicki told ATP Tennis Radio. 「It’s going to be tough for us, but we have Novak and hopefully Dutzee [Dusan Lajovic] also performs as well as he did last year.
I’m really hoping and believing in my team. It’s going to be some great matches. 「There are some great teams. It’s a really tough competition this year as it was last year, but there will be some really fun matches to watch and I’m looking forward to it」.
Troicki absolutely enjoyed the ATP Cup last yearRoberto Bautista Agut beat Lajovic in the opening rubber of the ATP Cup final tie to give Spain a 1-0 lead. Djokovic then defeated world No. 2 Rafael Nadal in the following rubber to force a decider.
In the deciding rubber, Djokovic and Troicki defeated Pablo Carreno Busta and Feliciano Lopez to give Serbia the trophy. 「I want to thank Novak for playing with me again. It was a great experience like always. I remember playing with him since we were nine, 10.
To share such a moment on the court with him, I cannot describe it with words. As you said, I'll remember it for the rest of my life,」 Troicki said shortly after winning the title.
"He is sensitive to public opinion," Courier said. "He spends energy trying to court public opinion and based on what he's done on the court he should be a huge fan favourite; he's just come up at a time that a lot of the fan base have decided they're a Roger (Federer) fan or a Rafa (Nadal) fan."
After Djokovic provided his list of requests, Victoria State Premier Daniel Andrews bluntly rejected the Serb. 「People are free to provide lists of demands but the answer is no,」 Andrews said. 「I know that there’s been a bit of chatter from a number of players about the rules - well, the rules apply to them as they apply to everybody else, and they were all briefed on that before they came and that was a condition on which they came.
「There’s no special treatment here」. Meanwhile, Courier thinks the time spent away from the game could help Kyrgios. "Maybe this could be something that triggers something really positive for him," Courier said of Kyrgios not playing since February 2020.
"You don't want to play him if you're in the player field because he's so unpredictable and powerful and he's going to have the crowd behind him."