{"id":130248,"date":"2020-01-22T06:45:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-22T05:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=130248"},"modified":"2020-01-22T09:51:59","modified_gmt":"2020-01-22T08:51:59","slug":"novak-cruises-into-australian-open-third-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-cruises-into-australian-open-third-round\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak cruises into Australian Open third round"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Defending champion Novak Djokovic continued his fine form in Melbourne, when he defeated Tatsuma Ito 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 to earn his 70th career <a href=\"https:\/\/ausopen.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Australian Open<\/a> win and advance to the third round.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The seven-time Melbourne Park titlist needed just 95 minutes to beat the Japanese wildcard at Rod Laver Arena on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic capitalised on five of his nine break point chances, having denied his opponent a single break point opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>The Serbian star won 93 per cent of points on his first-serve (43\/46) and was 6\/7 on net approaches.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201dHe was playing pretty aggressive and flat, with not too many unforced errors in the second set. I just managed to somehow find my way,\u201d<\/strong> Djokovic said in his on-court interview. <strong>\u201cMy serve helped me a lot to get out of trouble. I knew shots would come quick and flat, so I had to be quite low and put some variety on the shots, spins, slices, and come to the net on occasion. It worked well.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Match statistics: aces (16-9), double faults (5-1), winners (31-18), unforced errors (17-29), total points won (88-53).<\/p>\n<p><strong>For a place in the last 16, Novak will face another Japanese, after Yoshihito Nishioka (ATP #71) eliminated no.30 seed Dan Evans in straight sets.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It will be their second career meeting, Djokovic won their only previous encounter 6-1, 6-2.<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The second seed outplayed Japanese wild card Tatsuma Ito 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 in just 95 minutes to reach the third round in Melbourne. He will face another Japanese, Yoshihito Nishioka (ATP #71) on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":130245,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012354,101013108,101010469,101012415,101011697],"class_list":["post-130248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-australia-en","tag-australian-open-2020-en","tag-grand-slam-en-2","tag-melbourne-en","tag-second-round-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130248","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=130248"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130316,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130248\/revisions\/130316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}