MONTE CARLO (Reuters) – Unseeded Alejandro Tabilo beat twice champion Novak Djokovic 6-3 6-4 in the second round of the Monte Carlo Masters on Wednesday to maintain a remarkable 100% record win record over the 24-times major winner.
Djokovic, who suffered a shock defeat in the Miami Open final last month, had received a bye into the last-32 but came up short against the Chilean who had also beaten him in Rome last year.
“It has been a tough year, so a little bit of the nerves were there,” Tabilo said in an on-court interview.
“I remembered last time what I did well and thankfully I served well today and it helped me a lot. It was an unreal match.”
Tabilo has yet to drop a set against Djokovic as the 27-year-old registered back-to-back wins over the Serbian on clay.
Marat Safin and Jiri Vesely are the only other players to have faced Djokovic more than once and not lost, with both having 2-0 records.
Djokovic was chasing his 100th Tour level title while winning the Monte Carlo title would have made the 37-year-old the only player to win each Masters event at least three times.
“I expected myself at least to have put in a decent performance. Not like this, it was horrible,” said Djokovic, who made 29 unforced errors.
“I did not have high expectations. I knew I’m going to have a tough opponent and I knew I’m going to probably play pretty bad. But this bad, I didn’t expect.
“I was hoping it was not going to happen, but it was quite a high probability I’m going to play this way… A horrible feeling to play this way, just sorry for all the people that have to witness this.”
A second victory for Tabilo looked unlikely as the Chilean came into the tournament with a 2-9 win-loss record having lost his first six matches of the year before he turned things around.
“It’s just been some tough times… personal. But we’ve been trying to take care of it,” he said.
“Match by match, we’ve been getting a bit looser. Just so happy now that I’m feeling better.”
(Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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