Novak and his doubles partner at the BNP Paribas Open, Viktor Troicki, saved a match point en-route to a 5-7, 6-1, 11-9 victory over top seeds and defending champions Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut on Monday.
The French duo prevailed in the opening set, but Nole and Viktor responded strong, breaking their rivals twice in the second set to force a match tie-break. They faced a match point at 8-9 in the decider, but fought it off and went on to seal the win and set up a quarter-final meeting with no.6 seeds Raven Klaasen (RSA) and Rajeev Ram (USA).
The match lasted one hour and 25 minutes.
Stats: aces (4-3), double faults (4-4), total points won (66-62).
Novak will look to clinch his 300th ATP Masters 1000 match-win on Tuesday at 19:00 local time (Wednesday at 03:00 CET) when he faces Juan Martin del Potro (ARG, 31).
