Djokovic at practice with “feeder” Andy (vid)

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MIAMI – Novak Djokovic was out on the practice court Monday, ahead of his fourth-round clash at the Miami Open against No. 15 seed Lorenzo Musetti.

And there were two noteworthy observations.

The first one was something we’d never noticed before, until French player Jules Marie brought it up as he described his practice sessions with the Serbian star.

It’s true: his coach – in this case the great Andy Murray – actually IS the one who seeds all the ball, with that unique, choked-up, continental grip even former players develop when they cross over to the coaching ranks.

The entire time we watched – hundreds of feeds – maybe two came directly from Gomez. The coaches and Gomez even sent the balls over to Murray, or brought them to him, so he could feed them.

It’s not … anything, really. It’s just kind of an interesting quirk.

Here’s what it looked like.

The other thing is that Djokovic looked like he was grappling with … something. From a distance, maybe the upper back was stiff?

At one point mid-practice, his trainer gave him some tablets to take. Although there’s no way of knowing what they actually were. Djokovic swallowed them without even needing any water to wash them down.

Djokovic is an impressive 7-1 against Musetti, doing back to their first meeting in the fourth round of Roland Garros nearly four years ago.

But if you remember that one, Musetti won the first two sets in tiebreaks. And then he just fell right off the cliff physically and ended up having to retire down 0-4 in the fifth set.

They’ve had some good battles, notably on clay at Monte Carlo the last two years.

Interesting matchup, to be sure. But also a good opportunity for Djokovic to make the quarterfinals if he’s feeling up to scratch.