Tennis News: Novak Djokovic takes time off, Guadalajara Open updates

Novak Djokovic was already set to lose his top ranking on the ATP tour soon anyway due to how the ATP comes up with its points. Players who win tournaments will have points to defend the following year in the same tournament while some players chasing them in the rankings won’t have points to defend allowing those players to overtake the players who won previous tournaments. Basically, it gets weird.

But Novak Djokovic has announced he won’t be playing a several weeks and is taking some time off. This means he won’t be playing at the Shanghai Masters in early October. In fact, he likely won’t return until the Paris Masters that begins October 30. Djokovic would miss tournaments in Astana and Tel Aviv and would lose 750 ATP points by not playing.

Meanwhile, Carlos Alcaraz, who missed those tournaments in 2022, could win both of them and cut the difference between Novak Djokovic and himself in the rankings – currently 3,260 points – by close to half. Plus, Djokovic could play in Paris and the year-end ATP Finals in November and still lose enough points to Alcaraz (who didn’t play last year in those tournaments) where Djokovic would lose his top-ranking before the end of the year.

Novak Djokovic takes some well-deserved time off

Clearly, however, Djokovic doesn’t care much about the rankings now. He has earned that right, too. The 24-time Grand Slam winner can take off as much time as he needs. Heck, he could just choose to play in the majors in 2024 and he would have earned that right too.

Tuesday will see the Guadalajara Open in Mexico enter its third round. Some players will still be playing their second-round matches, though. Tennis scheduling can be weird.

The WTA 1000 event will have top-seed Ons Jabeur and second-seed Maria Sakkari playing on Tuesday. Jabeur will take on American Alycia Parks. In WTA rankings, Jabeur stayed in the top ten when the rankings were released this week, and this marks her 100th straight week of being in the top ten. That’s special stuff.