{"id":120732,"date":"2019-05-18T01:20:35","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T23:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=120732"},"modified":"2019-05-18T01:41:28","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T23:41:28","slug":"italian-open-novak-saves-2-mps-in-post-midnight-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/italian-open-novak-saves-2-mps-in-post-midnight-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian Open: Novak saves 2 MPs in post-midnight comeback win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>World no.1 Novak Djokovic survived a serious scare from Juan Martin Del Potro at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.internazionalibnlditalia.com\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Internazionali BNL d\u2019Italia<\/a> on Friday, fighting off two match points to rally past the Argentine 4-6, 7-6 (6), 6-4 and reach his 10th semi-final in Rome.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Del Potro broke in the seventh game of the opening set and held for 5-3. Novak earned three break points in the 10th game, but failed to capitalise on any of them.<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic was up 5-2 in the second set, but the Argentine fought back to level. The Serb fell 4-6 behind in the second set tie-break. However, he showed his composure to withstand pressure, and erased the two match points to even the contest.<\/p>\n<p>Though Del Potro held to open the deciding third set, Nole made a crucial break in the fifth game, improving to a 16-4 career mark in their H2H meetings.<\/p>\n<p>An outstanding match lasted just over 3 hours (3:01) and finished at 1:05 am Saturday.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cHe was playing really well, gave me a lot of trouble. I never lost faith I could come back to the match. One break of serve, mini break in the tie-break when he was 6-4, more or less open forehand that he was making the entire match, that&#8217;s all it took for me to come back,\u201d<\/strong> Djokovic said. <strong>\u201cHe missed a couple of crucial points in the tie-break. Also break point third set, quite easy forehand. That&#8217;s what happens. That&#8217;s sport. I&#8217;m just really pleased to overcome this challenge.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Match statistics: aces (6-12), double faults (3-1), winners (43-39), unforced errors (34-43), total points won (109-104).<\/p>\n<p><strong>In Saturday&#8217;s semi-final (20:00 CET), the top seed will face another Argentine, no.24 Diego Schwartzman (H2H 2-0), who beat sixth seed Kei Nishikori 6-4, 6-2.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Rafael Nadal (ESP, 2) and Stefanos Tsitsipas (GRE, 8) complete semi-final line-up.<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The four-time former titlist survived a serious scare from Juan Martin Del Potro at the Internazionali BNL d\u2019Italia on Friday, fighting off two match points to rally past the Argentine 4-6, 7-6 (6), 6-4 and reach his 10th semi-final in Rome<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":120730,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101013054,101012583,101011267,101011403,101012240],"class_list":["post-120732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-internazionali-bnl-ditalia-2019-en","tag-juan-martin-del-potro","tag-masters-1000-en","tag-quarterfinal-en","tag-rome-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120732","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=120732"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120753,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120732\/revisions\/120753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}