Despite knocking out Roger Federer in the semi-finals, Coric was unable to summon his best form against Djokovic on Sunday.
Coric – who was making his maiden Masters final appearance – could not stop Djokovic in his tracks.
Djokovic’s straight-sets victory was his 18th win on the trot and it will see him rise to world No 2 when the latest rankings are published today.
While the Serbian’s resurgence has been nothing short of incredible, Coric’s revival is noteworthy too.
Last year, Coric had fallen outside the top 50.
But 12 months on, and he is ranked 19th in the world.
And the Croatian has been impressed with how far he has come in such a short space of time.
“Last year in this time obviously I was really struggling,” Coric said.
“I was not playing well.
“In the offseason I decided to change my whole team.
“I decided to change my approach, as well.
“I was training for six weeks.
“I had a really good offseason and the longest offseason so far.
“I think I started gaining some benefit from that at the beginning of the year.
“Obviously then I started playing just better and better and that gave me some confidence for later on.”