{"id":130084,"date":"2020-01-20T13:57:52","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T12:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=130084"},"modified":"2020-01-21T10:17:45","modified_gmt":"2020-01-21T09:17:45","slug":"novak-begins-quest-for-8th-ao-title-captures-900th-career-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-begins-quest-for-8th-ao-title-captures-900th-career-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak begins quest for 8th AO title, captures 900th career win!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Nole became the sixth player in the Open Era to reach 900 tour-level wins, joining Guillermo Vilas, Rafael Nadal, Ivan Lendl, Roger Federer and Jimmy Connors.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Defending champion Novak Djokovic began his quest for a record-extending eighth <a href=\"https:\/\/ausopen.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Australian Open<\/a> title on Monday, with a 7-6 (5), 6-2, 2-6, 6-1 victory over Jan-Lennard Struff at Rod Laver Arena.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The match lasted two hours and 16 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Novak began his pursuit of 17th Major trophy racing to a 5-2 lead in the opening set. He suffered a drop off in level serving for the set, letting the German break back and force a tie-breaker, but eventually managed to wrap it up after 50 minutes, 7-5.<\/p>\n<p>The 16-time Grand Slam titlist continued the momentum into the second set and broke in the first and seventh games for 6-2.<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic was broken three times in the third set. He dropped it, then quickly regained composure and made a triple break in the fourth set to seal the win and move into the second round.<\/p>\n<p>The world no.2 now leads his ATP H2H with Struff 3-0.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cIt\u2019s great to be back in this arena that has a very special place in my heart. This has been by far the most successful court in my career, I love coming back to Australia, the land of tennis. I want to thank everyone for staying until midnight and supporting both players,\u201d<\/strong> Djokovic said in his on-court interview.<\/p>\n<p>Match statistics: aces (14-13), double faults (3-7), winners (44-39), unforced errors (28-34), total points won (113-91).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Novak will next play Tatsuma Ito (JPN, #146) on Wednesday (about 05.00 CET).<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With a 7-6, 6-2, 2-6, 6-1 victory over German Jan-Lennard Struff in the first round of the 2020 Australian Open, Novak become the sixth player in the Open Era to reach 900 tour-level wins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":130082,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012354,101013108,101012476,101010469,101012415],"class_list":["post-130084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-australia-en","tag-australian-open-2020-en","tag-first-round-en","tag-grand-slam-en-2","tag-melbourne-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130084","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=130084"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130174,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130084\/revisions\/130174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}