{"id":120851,"date":"2019-05-19T18:52:45","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T16:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=120851"},"modified":"2019-05-20T07:37:39","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T05:37:39","slug":"novak-heads-to-paris-with-runner-up-finish-in-rome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/uncategorized-en\/novak-heads-to-paris-with-runner-up-finish-in-rome\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak heads to Paris with runner-up finish in Rome"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novak failed in attempt to win a record 34th ATP Masters 1000 crown. He finished runner-up at the Internazionali BNL d\u2019Italia<\/a> for the fifth time.<\/p>\n

Second seed Rafael Nadal earned his 26th victory in 54 meetings with Nole, by winning 6-0, 4-6, 6-1 over the top seed and four-time former champion.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Novak appeared exhausted after spending more than five and a half hours on court in two tough three-setters against Juan Martin del Potro and Diego Schwartzman in the quarter-finals and semi-finals, respectively.<\/p>\n

Nadal earned 17 break points in the championship battle, compared to Novak\u2019s two opportunities, and that proved the difference, along with 22 more errors by Djokovic.<\/p>\n

The Spaniard was the fresher man on Sunday afternoon. He took the lead at the Foro Italico, dictating play from the beginning to break three times in the opening set.<\/p>\n

Novak began to play more aggressively, and with more intensity in the second set. After escaping a 0\/40 deficit on his serve in the seventh game, the Serbian ace broke Rafa’s serve three games later to force a decider.<\/p>\n

However, Novak allowed Nadal to seize control of the rallies early in the third set, and was broken three more times.<\/p>\n

The match lasted two hours and 25 minutes.<\/p>\n

“I’m really glad that I managed to get into the third set, considering the first set where I was blown away from the court. Obviously third set was not much different from the first,”<\/strong> Djokovic said. “I was just running out of fuel a little bit today. Just kind of missed that half a step, especially on the backhand side. He used it very well. He’s been playing some terrific tennis throughout the entire week. He was just too strong today.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Match statistics: aces (7-0), double faults (1-0), winners (33-31), unforced errors (39-17), total points won (70-92).<\/p>\n

Novak failed in the attempt to add a fifth Rome crown to his collection, having lifted the trophy in 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2015. He dropped to a 23-5 record on the season.<\/p>\n

It was his last tournament ahead of the second Grand Slam event of the year, the Roland Garros<\/a>, taking place in Paris from May 26 to June 09.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Novak\u2019s 2018 French Open campaign ended at hands of Italian Marco Cecchinato in the quarter-final (3-6, 6-7, 6-1, 6-7).<\/p>\n

Photo: Getty Images
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The Belgrade native failed in the attempt to add a fifth Rome crown to his collection, having lifted the trophy in 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2015. He lost to Rafael Nadal 0-6, 6-4, 1-6<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":120930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120851","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=120851"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120932,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120851\/revisions\/120932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}