Qualifying lucky loser Luca Nardi scored the biggest win of his young career on Monday, stunning world number one Novak Djokovic 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 at the ATP-WTA Indian Wells Masters.

The world number 123 from Italy ended the 11-match win streak of the veteran Serb at Masters events, with Nardi bettering the childhood tennis idol whose poster hung above his bed from the age of eight.

The 20-year-old was not awed by the big game of Djokovic, and broke Djokovic for a 4-2 lead in the deciding set before pounding out the victory three games later with a match point ace.

The Italian finished with 36 winners and 41 unforced errors while Djokovic had 31 errors in just under two and a half hours.

“Before this night no-one knew me,” Nardi said in an on-court interview after his win. “I hope the crowd enjoyed the game; I’m super happy with this one.”

Read full story on sport.timesofmalta.com

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.