{"id":127653,"date":"2019-11-13T00:28:45","date_gmt":"2019-11-12T23:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=127653"},"modified":"2019-11-13T17:19:42","modified_gmt":"2019-11-13T16:19:42","slug":"london-thiem-downs-novak-in-classic-books-semi-final-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/london-thiem-downs-novak-in-classic-books-semi-final-spot\/","title":{"rendered":"London: Thiem downs Novak in classic, books semi-final spot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Second seed and five-time champion Novak Djokovic suffered his 10th match loss of a season on Tuesday, in his second round-robin match at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nittoatpfinals.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Nitto ATP Finals<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>In one of the ATP matches of the year, Austrian Dominic Thiem recorded a 6-7 (5), 6-3, 7-6 (5) victory in two hours and 47 minutes to advance into the semi-finals.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Astonishing first set went to Novak. The two traded breaks early on. Djokovic broke for a 3-1 lead, but Thiem responded with a break to love to put them back on serve. Novak won the tie-break, answering everything the in-form Austrian threw at him.<\/p>\n<p>Thiem broke Novak in the second game of the second set to force a decider. The Serbian star saw his level drop as the 26-year-old evened their Group Bjorn Borg matchup.<\/p>\n<p>Novak twice recovered from a break down in the third set with Thiem failing to serve the match out before the tie-break. Djokovic raced to a 4-1 lead, but faced two match points soon after, falling 4-6 behind. Thiem used the second opportunity to seal his fourth win in 10 career meetings.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cI don&#8217;t think I have experienced too many matches like this where my opponent just goes for every single shot,\u201d<\/strong> said Novak, who fell to 1-1 in London. <strong>\u201cHe was unbelievable. He was taking every opportunity to smack the ball as hard as he could. Flatten it out, backhand down the line. It was amazing. I have played him before. I know his game. But what he did tonight was just out of ordinary.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Match statistics: aces (9-6), double faults (3-4), winners (27-50), unforced errors (21-44), total points won (108-110).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Novak will face no.3 seed and six-time titlist Roger Federer (SUI) on Thursday at 21:00 CET, for a spot in the semi-finals.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The 32-year-old Belgrade native leads their H2H series 26-22.<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Austrian rallied to beat Novak 6-7 (5), 6-3, 7-6 (5), and made his first Nitto ATP Finals semis. Djokovic will face no.3 seed and six-time titlist Roger Federer (SUI) on Thursday, for a spot in the last four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":127651,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101011310,101012193,101013027,101013036,101011545],"class_list":["post-127653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1500-en","tag-london-en","tag-nitto-atp-finals-en","tag-rr2-en","tag-season-finale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127653","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=127653"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127728,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127653\/revisions\/127728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}