{"id":106490,"date":"2018-08-14T05:03:02","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T03:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=106490"},"modified":"2018-08-14T11:55:29","modified_gmt":"2018-08-14T09:55:29","slug":"novak-tops-johnson-to-secure-spot-in-r2-of-cincinnati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-tops-johnson-to-secure-spot-in-r2-of-cincinnati\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak tops Johnson to secure spot in R2 of Cincinnati"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Novak Djokovic took to the Cincinnati courts for his first-round match at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsopen.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Western &amp; Southern Open<\/a> on Monday evening.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The 30-time ATP Masters champion held off Steve Johnson, the third-highest-ranked American, capitalising on his ninth match point to advance 6-4, 7-6 (4) in two hours and two minutes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Novak, seeded tenth, was tested by the home favourite. The Serbian star fended off a break point in the ninth game before breaking his rival to take the opening set.<\/p>\n<p>He rode that momentum to jump to a 3-0 lead in the second set, but the American raised his level, winning the next four games, including two breaks of serve. Djokovic regrouped to level at 4-4. The five-time runner-up came up short on five match points in the ninth game and two more in the 12th. Nole came out on top in the tie-break to wrap up his 28th match win in 2018.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cI thought I had patches of the match where I played pretty good,\u201d<\/strong> said Djokovic. <strong>\u201cI should have closed it out earlier, but credit to him for fighting, fighting back, playing some good points when he needed to, with big serves. Overall, I&#8217;m glad I managed to close it out in straight sets, because it was becoming quite a battle, two hours, two sets.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Match statistics: aces (7-4), double faults (4-5), winners (28-21), unforced errors (33-27), total points won (89-76).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Novak will continue pursuit of the &#8216;Golden Masters&#8217; when he meets Adrian Mannarino (H2H 3-0) on Wednesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Frenchman, ranked no.28, beat Marco Cecchinato in three sets 6-7, 6-2, 7-6.<\/p>\n<p>With Cincinnati trophy Nole would complete set of all nine ATP Masters 1000 titles.<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 30-time Masters champion held off Steve Johnson, capitalising on his ninth match point to advance 6-4, 7-6 (4) in two hours and two minutes. Novak will continue pursuit of the &#8216;Golden Masters&#8217; when he meets Adrian Mannarino (H2H 3-0) on Wednesday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":106486,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101012291,310,101011267,101012451],"class_list":["post-106490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-cincinnati-en","tag-first-round","tag-masters-1000-en","tag-western-southern-open-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106490"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106510,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106490\/revisions\/106510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}