{"id":1200,"date":"2011-02-20T13:26:24","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T13:07:21","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-04-17T14:37:17","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T13:37:17","slug":"nole-begins-dubai-title-defence-against-llodra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/nole-begins-dubai-title-defence-against-llodra\/","title":{"rendered":"Nole begins Dubai title defence against Llodra"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"arhiva\" src=\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/arhiva\/slike\/TvrdaPodloga\/832.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/>{nl}<span style=\"color: gray;\">Photo: AP<\/span>{nl}{nl}The draw has been made for the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, an ATP World Tour 500 event that will be played from February 21-26 for $1,619,500 prize money. {nl} {nl}Defending champion and world no.3 Novak Djokovic will be looking to continue his fantastic season-opening form. The 2008 and 2011 Australian Open winner from Serbia has claimed top honours in Dubai for the last two years and will be going for his third consecutive title.{nl}{nl}<strong>Nole\u2019s first round opponent will be world no.23 Frenchman Michael Llodra. Their H2H is 1-1.<\/strong>{nl}{nl}Djokovic could meet either Feliciano Lopez or Yen-Hsun Lu in the second round.{nl}{nl}His possible rivals in the later stages of the tournament are:{nl}{nl}Quarter-finals: Marcos Baghdatis (CYP,7).{nl}{nl}Semi-finals : Tomas Berdych (CZE,3), Viktor Troicki (SRB,6).{nl}{nl}Roger Federer (SUI,1), Mikhail Youzhny (RUS,4), Ivan Ljubicic (CRO,5), Ernests Gulbis (LAT)&#8230;are in the upper part of the draw, and Novak can\u2019t meet them before the finals.{nl}{nl}Nole beat Russian Mikhail Youzhny 7-5, 5-7, 6-3 in last year\u2019s final. {nl}{nl}The winner of this year\u2019s Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships will earn $386,000 and 500 ATP points. {nl}{nl}<strong>Nole and his brother Marko got wildcard for the doubles competition. They will face top seeds Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi (IND) in the opening round.<\/strong>{nl}{nl}<span style=\"color: gray;\"> Here\u2019s the singles main draw:<\/span>{nl}{nl}[1] Roger Federer vs [WC] Somdev Devvarmann{nl}Marcel Granollers vs Dmitry Tursunov{nl}Sergiy Stakhovsky vs [WC] Omar Awadhy{nl}[WC] Michael Berrer vs [8] Ernests Gulbis{nl}{nl}[4 ]Mikhail Youzhny vs Gilles Simon{nl}[Q] Lukas Rosol vs [Q] Karol Beck{nl}[Q] Grigor Dimitrov vs Richard Gasquet{nl}[Q] Sergei Bubka vs [5] Ivan Ljubicic{nl}{nl}[6] Viktor Troicki vs Philipp Kohlschreiber{nl}Andreas Seppi vs Philipp Petzschner{nl}Nikolay Davydenko vs Guillermo Garcia-Lopez{nl}Jeremy Chardy vs [3] Tomas Berdych{nl}{nl}[7] Marcos Baghdatis vs Andrey Golubev{nl}Florian Mayer vs Jarkko Nieminen{nl}Feliciano Lopez vs Lu Yen-Hsun{nl}Michael Llodra vs <strong>[2] Novak Djokovic<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The draw has been made for the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, an ATP World Tour 500 event that will be played from February 21-26 for $1,619,500 prize money<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012183],"class_list":["post-1200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-dubai-2011-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1200"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27028,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions\/27028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}