{"id":110563,"date":"2018-10-13T12:36:38","date_gmt":"2018-10-13T10:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=110563"},"modified":"2018-11-01T13:51:51","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T12:51:51","slug":"flawless-novak-secures-return-to-no-2-with-sf-win-over-zverev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/flawless-novak-secures-return-to-no-2-with-sf-win-over-zverev\/","title":{"rendered":"Flawless Novak secures return to no.2 with SF win over Zverev"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A flawless performance from Novak Djokovic gave him a 6-2, 6-1 win over Alexander Zverev and a place in the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.shanghairolexmasters.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Shanghai Rolex Masters<\/a> final.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In his 1000th career match (827-173), the second seed beat the fourth-seeded German playing at an astonishingly high level on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Zverev was also playing quite good in the first five games, but his mental strength dropped dramatically when he lost a break. The three-time former champion forced his rival into uncomfortable positions and capitalised on poorly-timed double faults. He broke twice in each set and did not face a break point en route to the victory.<\/p>\n<p>Novak, who has won 71 ATP Tour titles, reached his fifth final of the year in exactly an hour.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;It was a great way to celebrate the milestone [1000th match],&#8221;<\/strong> said Djokovic. <strong>&#8220;I did everything I intended to do very well. I just made him always play an extra shot and tried to get as many of his first serves back in play. He had a low percentage of first serves, in general, through the entire match, which definitely helped me to get into the rally where I thought maybe I have a better chance than him with the way I&#8217;m playing. From my side, I tried to just focus on what I needed to do. I felt I executed it well\u201c.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Match statistics: aces (0-2), double faults (1-3), winners (6-7), unforced errors (24-9), total points won (51-29).<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Serb, aiming for his 32nd Masters title, will play Borna Coric on Sunday at 10.30 CET (H2H 2-0). <\/strong>The Croatian 13th seed defeated defending champion Roger Federer (SUI, 1) 6-4, 6-4.<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As a result of reaching the final, Nole will surpass Federer to no.2 when the next ATP Ranking list is published on October 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A flawless performance from Novak gave him a 6-2, 6-1 win over Alexander Zverev and a place in the Shanghai Rolex Masters final. The Serb, aiming for his 32nd Masters title, will play Borna Coric (CRO, 13) on Sunday at 10.30 CET<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":110545,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101011267,101010433,101012348,101012357,101013017],"class_list":["post-110563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-masters-1000-en","tag-semifinal-en","tag-shanghai-en","tag-shanghai-rolex-masters-en","tag-zverev"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110563","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=110563"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110592,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110563\/revisions\/110592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}