Serbian Tennis star Novak Djokovic admitted that he was agitated to miss his daughter Tara's birthday but vowed to make it up to her by buying plenty of presents. Djokovic politely asked the reporter not to remind him of that, claiming that at least he wants to win the US Open title to make his daughter happy.
With the 38-year-old's daughter set to turn 8 on September 2, Djokovic will miss it as he is set to compete in the quarter-final of US Open against Taylor Fritz. The 24-time Grand Slam winner defeated Jan-Lennard Struff in straight sets to progress to the quarter-final.
When asked by a reporter about the quarter-final clashing with his daughter's birthday, Djokovic responded:
"It is predicted that might happen. Yes, she was not very happy about it. Me being absent from her birthday, so don't remind me of that please. I want to win, I want to try to win when at least I'm here, give her that kind of a present. I'm going to send some nice kind of present. A nice surprise for her birthday party. Hopefully, the win can be something she can be happy with. It is what it is."
"It definitely helps if you serve well" - Novak Djokovic
Djokovic reflected that he had an outstanding performance while serving and was delighted to out-serve one of the best during this year's tournament. He said, as quoted by BBC Sport:
"It definitely helps if you serve well. I think I had a great serving performance in the last round and also tonight. I just saw the stats, I out-served one of the guys that had the most aces during the tournament this year, so that's a great stat. Obviously that helps make my life easier on the court. Maybe I don't need to work as hard or unnecessarily more than I have to."
The Serbian suffered defeats in the last two Grand Slam semi-finals.
