Western & Southern Open<\/a> last four.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe match lasted one hour and 26 minutes.<\/p>\n
Both players held firmly in the opening set to set up a tiebreaker. Novak won it in convincing fashion and went on to break his opponent twice in the second set, in the second and sixth games.<\/p>\n
“He played really well throughout the first set. We both held our service games quite comfortably until the tie-break and then I just stayed in there, very focused, didn\u2019t drop my level. He did,”<\/strong> Djokovic said. “He double faulted and missed a couple of forehands and obviously that cost him the tie-break. The beginning of the second set I knew it was very important to try to break his serve right away and get into advantage, which I did. I managed to finish off the match really well.”<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics: aces (5-2), double faults (6-5), winners (17-18), unforced errors (15-22), total points won (73-52).<\/p>\n
Djokovic is into the semi-finals at this ATP Masters 1000 event for the seventh time.<\/p>\n
For a spot in the championship match, Novak will face Daniil Medvedev on Saturday about 23:55 CET.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe ninth-seeded Russian defeated his compatriot Andrey Rublev in straight sets.<\/p>\n
Novak leads their ATP H2H series 3-1, but Medvedev won their most recent meeting at this year’s Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters.<\/p>\n
David Goffin (BEL, 16) and Richard Gasquet (FRA) complete semi-final line-up.<\/p>\n
Photo: AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top seed and defending champion recorded a 7-6 (2), 6-1 victory over Lucas Pouille to book a place in the Western & Southern Open last four. For a spot in the championship match, Novak will face Daniil Medvedev (RUS, 9).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":124098,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101012291,101011202,101010550,101012292],"class_list":["post-124103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-cincinnati-en","tag-masters-en","tag-quarterfinals-en","tag-usa-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124103","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=124103"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124154,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124103\/revisions\/124154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}