"We have to face reality, I'm not the player I used to be," says Coric after his early exit at the US Open

Borna Coric continues his drought. The Croatian, ranked 105th in the world, suffered his fifth consecutive defeat, this time in the first round of the US Open against Jiri Lehecka, the 20th seed (3-6, 6-4, 7-6, 6-1).

At 28 years old, Coric has only won one match in the New York Grand Slam since his quarterfinal appearance in 2020 against Zverev. Since his title at the Cincinnati Masters 1000 in 2022, the Croatian has struggled to find consistency and has been forced to regularly return to the Challenger circuit to achieve results.

Moreover, Coric knows it—he doesn’t want to linger around the top 100 for too long, as he stated in a press conference after his four-set loss to the Czech player.

"I think I’m a pretty realistic person; I don’t like being negative or falsely positive. I believe we have to evaluate everything that happens in life realistically, with a cool head.

We have to start from there to analyze, I don’t know what to call it, the tennis tour, this traveling circus where we’re constantly on the move and playing. Sometimes you have to face reality—I’m not the player I used to be, and that’s it.

I won’t play until I’m 38 or 40 like Novak (Djokovic). Anything outside the top 50 doesn’t interest me at all, so we’ll see how much longer I keep playing.

I’ve given myself, so to speak, a 'deadline' to sit down and think about the relevance of all this. I don’t want to go into details right now, but yes, I’m setting deadlines for myself to reach a certain ranking.

I could always hover around the top 100, play a lot of Challenger tournaments, and be around 80th in the ATP rankings, but that doesn’t interest me. I have to work very hard to be able to step on the court and perform well.

I’m undergoing a lot of therapies, which people don’t know about. But you also have to realize that just to reach and maintain a spot around 80th in the world, it already takes a lot of effort," Coric told Tribuna.