Mutua Madrid Open final<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\nIt was a physical baseline battle that lasted two hours and 22 minutes. Thiem broke first in both sets, but Novak responded well raising his level to fight back. The 31-year-old Serb broke his rival in the 11th game of the second set to move ahead for the first time. He served for the match at 6-5, but double faulted, letting the Austrian back into the contest. However, the 15-time Grand Slam champion maintained his focus in both tie-breaks and moved through to the championship match.<\/p>\n
Djokovic now leads the pair\u2019s ATP H2H series 6-2.<\/p>\n
“I played the best match of the clay-court season so far, for me, against arguably the best tennis player in the world on this surface, this season,”<\/strong> said Djokovic. “Dominic had an amazing tournament in Barcelona and here he beat Roger yesterday in a thrilling match. So he was in form. I just managed to hold my nerves and play the best when it was most needed.”<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics: aces (3-2), double faults (1-2), winners (17-26), unforced errors (29-39), total points won (90-81).<\/p>\n
Novak advanced to his 48th ATP Masters 1000 final (32-15). He will face Stefanos Tsitsipas (GRE, 8) on Sunday at 18:30 CET.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Next Generation Greek star outplayed Rafael Nadal in stunning performance, earning one of the biggest wins of his career (6-4, 2-6, 6-3).<\/p>\n
Stefanos beat Nole in their only previous meeting, at Rogers Cup in Toronto last year.<\/p>\n
Novak is trying to tie Nadal’s record of 33 ATP Masters 1000 titles. Every time he has won semi-final at Caja Magica (2011, 2016), Djokovic has gone on to win the trophy.<\/p>\n
Photo: Profimedia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nole will compete in his third Mutua Madrid Open final after defeating no.5 seed Dominic Thiem 7-6 (2), 7-6 (4). The Serbian star is trying to tie Rafael Nadal’s record of 33 ATP Masters 1000 trophies. Next up for Djokovic is Stefanos Tsitsipas (GRE, 8) on Sunday at 18:30 CET<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":120159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101012203,101011267,101013053,101010433],"class_list":["post-120163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-madrid-en","tag-masters-1000-en","tag-mutua-madrid-open-2019-en","tag-semifinal-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120163","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=120163"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120212,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120163\/revisions\/120212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}