Novak Djokovic says US Open disqualification was a 'big lesson' but cannot guarantee it will not happen again

In his first public appearance since his dramatic exit from the US Open, Novak Djokovic addressed the moment when he struck a loose ball into the throat of line judge Laura Clark, and admitted that he couldn’t rule out the possibility of a repeat.

Djokovic was defaulted after the accident, which happened during his fourth-round match against Pablo Carreno Busta. But after a week at home in Belgrade, he has regrouped, and is due to play either Tennys Sandgren or Salvatore Caruso in his first match at the Rome Masters.

“Sometimes situations like this happen,” Djokovic said. “I cannot promise I will never ever do anything similar to that in my life. I am definitely willing to try my best so that something like that never happens again. But anything is possible in life so I am going to take it as profoundly as possible as a big lesson.

“It was very unexpected and very unintended as well, to hit her,” Djokovic added. “But when you hit the ball like that, you have a chance to hit someone who is on the court. The rules are clear so I accepted it. I don’t think I will ever forget about it. These things stay in your memory for the rest of your life. But I don’t think I will have any major issues coming back to the tour.”

A repeat of this one-in-a-thousand chance seems highly unlikely, especially as line judges will soon be an endangered species in a different sense. Sources have told Telegraph Sport that this US Open – which used Hawk-Eye Live’s robots to call the lines on all but the main two show-courts – has probably sealed the fate of human officials (barring the chair umpires, the supervisors and the referee) at the biggest events.

According to insiders, the sense of calm around the outside courts was noticeable – as well as the greater speed with which the matches progressed. Whereas the Hawk-Eye challenge system used on Arthur Ashe Stadium and Louis Armstrong Stadium still has its flaws, as demonstrated by the injustice visited on Daniil Medvedev (in a sequence of events too complex to explain here) in his semi-final loss to Dominic Thiem.

What with the Djokovic incident, and the obvious superiority of robots to humans, the line judges in New York were privately acknowledging that they should enjoy their remaining outings while they can. It is possible, however, that automated line-calling may prove to be a hard-court phenomenon. Clay-court events have so far resisted the march of Hawk-Eye, preferring to rely on the visible mark left by the bounce of the ball, while Wimbledon has great regard for tradition.