22-time Grand Slam Champion Novak Djokovic was knocked out of the Italian Open on Wednesday after having succumbed to a 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 to World number seven Holger Rune on Wednesday. The top-seeded Serb lost to in a dramatic rain-interrupted quarter-final after he had entered into the game carrying an unspecified injury. This is Djokovic's second defeat to the 20-year-old Dane. Earlier, the rising youngster had beat the Serb to win the Masters 1000 at Paris Bercy in November last year.
The Italian open face-off between the two players witnessed separate instances of verbal exchanges with the chair umpire by both the players. While Djokovic was involved in a spat over a time warning, Rune was involved in a bit of exchange over a second-set line call.
The match had to be paused for over an hour after rain. Not long after the match began, the 35-year-old requested for extra towels as he needed to pad his lower back on the bench during most changeovers. Other than this, it is worth highlighting that Djokovic had sustained a a right elbow niggle in the build up to this natch that even ruled him out of the tournament in Madrid.
Djokovic received medical treatment by the trainer as well as the tournament doctor after the third game of the second set and even received a dose of a painkiller before he was able to resume play. However, he couldn't end on the winning side this time around and lost his fourth quarter-final in Rome. Overall, this was his 17th back-to-back appearance in the quarter-final match of Italian Open out of which he has come out on top on 13 occasions. The last player who had beaten Djokovic in a quarter-final fixture of this tournament was Tomas Berdych, the Czech tennis player.
The match lasted two hours and 18 minutes but ended Djokovic's campaign who was chasing his seventh title. Rune will be up against Casper Ruud or Francisco Cerundolo in the semi-finals.