Novak Djokovic has about had it with the extremely talented young Italians by now.
In Australia, it was Jannik Sinner who kept him from a record 11th Australian Open singles title, two months after Sinner and his fellow Italians eliminated Serbia in the semifinals of the Davis Cup.
And Monday night at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, 20-year-old Luca Nardi — No. 123 in the rankings — handed the 24-time Grand Slam champion an unceremoniously early exit from the tournament that bills itself as “Tennis Paradise,” 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, in two hours and 20 minutes.
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On a cool, breezy night in the desert, with the wind ruffling the players’ shirts from early on, Nardi did his best impression of Sinner and pounded every easy ball he could right back at Djokovic with pace and power, placement and angles.
And Djokovic gave Nardi plenty of easy balls, playing with a once-rare lack of precision that has happened far more often than anyone might have predicted at the start of the season. Djokovic has rarely been three months into a season and without a title to his name, but that is where the world No. 1 and arguably the greatest player of the modern era finds himself.
“I helped him play well, and I didn’t help myself at all,” a visibly miffed Djokovic said, minutes after Nardi sent him off with an ace out wide to Djokovic’s forehand that he barely moved for. “I made some really terrible unforced errors. Just quite defensive tennis and, you know, not much on the ball in the third, and that’s it.”
Djokovic wasn’t wrong. So many times he has corralled a player like Nardi early on, like a cowboy throwing a rope around the neck of a wild horse, and steered him around the court all match long. Monday night, he barely made Nardi move on many points, allowing him to stand his ground in the middle of the court and whale away, sending Djokovic chasing balls that bounced in, then shot off the court. When Djokovic did try to move Nardi around, he missed his targets.
“Really, really bad,” Djokovic said of his level. “He’s having a great day. I’m having a really bad day. Results as a negative outcome for me.”
Now, forgive yourself if you didn’t pick Nardi for a surprise run to the Round of 16 at Indian Wells. He wasn’t even supposed to be in the tournament, having lost in the final round of the qualifying event. But then Tomás Martín Etcheverry dropped out, and Nardi was the next so-called lucky loser up and took his slot.
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That happened to have been an excellent slot, since Etcheverry was seeded 27th and got a bye into the second round. So all Nardi had to do to earn his showdown with Djokovic was beat Zhang Zhizhen of China.
Still, if you were making a list of Italians most likely to take out Djokovic, Nardi would have been very low on it. But something important is going on in Italian tennis right now.
Sinner won a Grand Slam title in January, the first for an Italian man in 48 years. Matteo Arnaldi, 23, has become a player no one wants to face. There are still high hopes for Lorenzo Musetti, who is just 22.
Now comes Nardi, pretty much out of nowhere, who pulled off the nifty trick of winning a tennis match despite losing more points than his opponent: 92, compared with 93 for Djokovic.
In the moments after the upset, Nardi told the stadium that he had spent Sunday night dreaming of somehow beating Djokovic.
“Now it’s real,” he said.
Indeed it was.
Nardi has a poster of Djokovic on his bedroom wall at home. “Every time I go to sleep, I see Novak,” he said.
He has no plans to take it down.
Djokovic said he was planning to play the second half of the so-called Sunshine Double in Miami next week. He had not played since the Australian Open and, at 36, might be reaching an age where he can’t expect to sail into the semifinals at a big tournament. He desperately wanted to do well at Indian Wells, where he had not played in five years.
“Wasn’t meant to be,” he said. “We move on.”
(Photo: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
Matthew Futterman is an award-winning veteran sports journalist and the author of two books, “Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed” and “Players: How Sports Became a Business.”Before coming to The Athletic in 2023, he worked for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Star-Ledger of New Jersey and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is currently writing a book about tennis, "The Cruelest Game: Agony, Ecstasy and Near Death Experiences on the Pro Tennis Tour," to be published by Doubleday in 2026. Follow Matthew on Twitter @mattfutterman
