{"id":127777,"date":"2019-11-26T12:26:35","date_gmt":"2019-11-26T11:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=127777"},"modified":"2019-12-20T16:00:08","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T15:00:08","slug":"novak-to-return-to-abu-dhabi-in-december","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-to-return-to-abu-dhabi-in-december\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak to return to Abu Dhabi in December"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Mubadala World Tennis Championship (MWTC) organisers announced that 2018 champion Novak Djokovic is part of the lineup for the 2019 edition, which runs from December 19-21, at the International Tennis Centre at Zayed Sports City in Abu Dhabi.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The 32-year-old Serbian star, a four-time MWTC winner, joined a dream lineup of Rafael Nadal, Andrey Rublev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Karen Khachanov and Hyeon Chung.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Novak received a BYE to the last four, and will play his first match on the second day of the championship, December 20 (14:00 CET), against either Tsitsipas or Rublev.<\/strong> <strong>Nadal awaits the winner of the match between Khachanov and Chung.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Final match (16:00 CET) takes place on Saturday, December 21, as well as a third-place play-off (14:00 CET).<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cAbu Dhabi is a special place and one where I have tasted success consistently. The courts are great, the spectators know their sport, and the atmosphere is thoroughly enjoyable,\u201d<\/strong> said Novak. <strong>\u201cThe lineup for the tournament is really strong. You always want to play challenging opponents early in the season in order to get a good measure of yourself and I am hoping I can put in place a few things that I will be working on in the off-season.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Making his debut in Abu Dhabi in 2011, Djokovic has never lost a match at the MWTC. He won the title three years in a row from 2011-2013, and last year.<\/p>\n<p><strong>In the 2018 final, Novak defeated South African Kevin Anderson, 4-6, 7-5, 7-5.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For more information visit: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mubadalawtc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">www.mubadalawtc.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You can download Nole December desktop calendar <a href=\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Calendar_December2019.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Mubadala World Tennis Championship (MWTC) organisers announced that Novak is part of the lineup for the 2019 edition, which runs from December 19-21, at the International Tennis Centre at Zayed Sports City in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":127732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012218,101012333,101013098,101012199],"class_list":["post-127777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-abu-dhabi-en","tag-exhibition-en","tag-mubadala-world-tennis-championship-2019-en","tag-uae-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127777","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=127777"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128543,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127777\/revisions\/128543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}