Although Jannik Sinner clinched his maiden Grand Slam title at Melbourne Park, Novak Djokovic is still the talk of the town. The world no.1 suffered a shocking exit from this Australian Open at the hands of Sinner in the semifinals. This defeat not only ended his 33-match winning streak at the AO but also deprived him of quite a few records.

Following Novak Djokovic’s exit from the first Grand Slam of the season several fans and tennis experts came up to up their analysis on the Serb’s performance this year. Matt Trollope, a renowned journalist from Tennis Australia revealed how Djokovic missed out on breaking a 31-year-old tennis record.

Matt Trollope talks about how Djokovic fans were scrambling for the statisticians in the record books during AO 2024

Novak Djokovic had last lost a match before this in the Australian Open almost six years ago. He has won a total of 10 Australian Open titles (4 in the last 5 years) in his career. This would’ve been his 11th title at Melbourne and it would’ve also taken his total Grand Slam titles to a staggering 25. But it didn’t happen, his winning streak came to an end in the AO almost after 2196 days. What did Matt Trollope say recently on The AO Show podcast about Djokovic’s near miss?

“Watching what Novak was doing got everyone kind of scrambling for the statisticians in the record books because he was up six love six love one love. And people are like, Oh, is there going to be a rare triple bagel and it turned out the last time that had happened in a Grand Slam major was 1993. So it would have been 31 years,” said Matt Trollope.

A triple bagel is an instance when a player wins a best-of-five match without losing a single set. This means that a player has to win the first three sets 6-0 each, hence winning the match 6-0, 6-0, 6-0. The term was first coined by American commentator Harold Solomon and popularized by another American, Bud Collins.

Spanish tennis player Sergi Bruguera was the last one to achieve a triple bagel in a Grand Slam proper when he beat Frenchman Thierry Champion in the 2nd round of the French Open in 1993.

Several other renowned faces recently commented on Novak Djokovic’s shocking exit from the Melbourne Slam. Let’s find out some of the reactions.

Patrick Mouratoglou believes even the champions sometimes need to fail

Serena Williams’ former coach recently gave an interview where spoke about Novak Djokovic’s recent loss at the AO. He said, “Now when you think about Novak at the Australian Open, he didn’t lose one match at the Australian Open since 2018. He never lost a semi-final at the Australian Open. He won 10 titles here. In a way, it brought so much pressure. Imagine he would win again, that would be crazy. That’s too much.“

He added, “Of course, he didn’t do it on purpose, for sure not. But subconsciously, he wanted to take it out of the way. ‘OK, let’s lose one. It’s just too much for me. I can’t anymore. Even in champions, when it’s too much pressure, sometimes they need to fail. In a way, they feel relieved. I would not be surprised if Novak feels relieved after that tournament.“

Even Martina Navratilova backed the Serb, calling him ‘a constant professional‘. She praised Djokovic’s ability to thrive under pressure and admired his ability to keep on performing at the age of 36.