Novak Djokovic surprised many fans when he accepted a wildcard to play the Swiss Indoors later this month.
Djokovic has not played the tournament since he lost the 2010 final to Roger Federer, but opportunity arose when the star’s appearance at the Six Kings Slam was delayed until December.
The Serbian still has an outside shot of qualifying for the ATP Finals, but he will need good performances in Basel and Paris before the season draws to a close.
Whatever happens in the final stretch of the season, Andy Roddick believes Djokovic’s stacked schedule could help him prepare for the 2027 Australian Open.
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Speaking on Served, Roddick said Djokovic’s undoubtedly needs more match practice at this period of the year in order to get himself in shape ahead of the Melbourne event.
“I’m just telling you like I love the way that he’s going about this because if you don’t play from the US Open and then you try to play one match in, you know, Brisbane and then you go try to win a major, I just think that’s really hard generally and I think it’s just harder as you go, right? I think it’s much harder at 40 than it is at even 37 for for Novak,” said Roddick.
“Like can you kind of wing a Slam run? I don’t know that the answer’s immediately yes for Novak now. I love that he’s getting match play because even if he takes a month off, he’s not going to be in a hurry to get those feels.
“Like those feels aren’t going to disappear in a week or two, right? Then you can load up your body. Then you can do all the physical training. But I like late match play in the year before going down to Australia in January.”
Roddick believes Djokovic should also sign up to a pre-Australian Open event before the Grand Slam too.
“I would love to see him play three, four, five, six matches before the Aussie Open. I think at this point in his career and maybe it’s a tell with him adding adding tournaments late and that that he might agree with that logic and I’m happy to see him doing it.
“I think this is him saying like you know a lot of a lot of people saying is he going to be in Australia and I think he’s going well yeah I’m not going to be in Basel if I’m not going to be in Australia, right? Like I’m not adding Basel to retire.”
Djokovic signed up for the Adelaide International in 2025, but he withdrew at the last minute.
He ended up playing the Australian Open without a warm-up match, with his last competitive performance coming at the Hellenic Championships in Athens in November 2025.
However, that did not seem to be a negative for Djokovic, as he reached the final of the 2026 Australian Open.
He beat the likes of Jannik Sinner and Lorenzo Musetti en route to the final, before losing in four sets to Carlos Alcaraz.
