Novak Djokovic, the number 1 tennis player in the world for many years, has always shown incredible endurance. So much so, his opponent had to admit that they didn’t have a single winning percentage.

Joao Sousa, the world’s 66th ranked tennis player, is not a hot name in tennis. Partly because Joao Sousa did not create glorious victories such as beating famous players in top matches at a Grand Slam tournament.

Another part, Joao Sousa is also haunted by a name: Novak Djokovic. All 6 encounters with Nole, the Portuguese player, lost the match. With 16 sets in the 6 matches mentioned above, Sousa did not win a single set and was eliminated in major tournaments. It was 2 times at Roland Garros, 2 times at the US Open, besides two ATP Masters 1000 in Miami and Paris.

So, in an interview with Tennis World USA, Joao Sousa admitted that he was afraid of Novak Djokovic, even haunted in dreams. The Portuguese says clashing Novak Djokovic is like playing against a wall. He is the top player Joap encounters the most. Sadly, he never won.

But for Sousa personally, these failures are not meaningless. Thanks to being confronted many times with Novak Djokovic, he learned to be fearless. He failed a lot, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get anything for himself.

Fighting Nole gave him an understanding of how the top players played. And now, Sousa aims to beat them whether it’s Djokovic, Nadal, Federer or whoever. He used to haunt the name Djokovic in his dream, but now that fear is no longer there.

In fact, the fact that a player is obsessed with losing to Djokovic many times is not new. Even the one who defeated Nole in the Grand Slam final was in that state. That is Stan Wawrinka.

During a conversation with French magazine L’Illustre in mid-July, Wawrinka recounted his feelings of fear before he met Novak Djokovic in the 2016 US Open final. when entering the match against Djokovic. That year he was 31 years old and thought this would be his last chance at the Grand Slam.

The training session before the final did not go smoothly when there were strong winds. Five minutes before entering the center court, he fell into a state of extreme nervousness and anxiety. And he started to cry. Magnus Norman (Stan Wawrinka’s coach at the time) came to his side to encourage him. Fortunately, everything then went as desired and I beat him unbelievably.