{"id":1370,"date":"2011-11-04T18:49:52","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T17:49:52","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-04-22T10:10:14","modified_gmt":"2012-04-22T09:10:14","slug":"novak-battles-back-to-advance-into-basel-semis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-battles-back-to-advance-into-basel-semis\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak battles back to advance into Basel semis"},"content":{"rendered":"

{nl}Photo: Getty Images<\/font>{nl}{nl}Nole is only one win away from defending the finals in Basel.{nl}{nl}Djokovic made it through to the last four after defeating Marcos Baghdatis 2-6, 6-2, 6-3 at the Swiss Indoors today.<\/b>{nl}{nl}The top-seeded Serb needed 1 hour and 38 minutes to beat the 59-ranked (former world no.8) Cypriot.{nl}{nl}Novak couldn\u2019t find his rhythm at the beginning of the quarter-final match. He was broken twice in the opening set, in the first and seventh games, Baghdatis won it 6-2 in 29 minutes.{nl}{nl}The 24-year-old Belgrade native recovered from losing the first set and stepped up his performance in the second.{nl} {nl}The Cypriot started making more errors, his serve let him down and Novak used his chances in the sixth and eighth games to level the match at one set all.{nl}{nl}The 2009 titlist and last year\u2019s runner-up took the momentum into the third set. A break in the second game was enough for him to wrap up the set and match 6-3. {nl}{nl}“I started slowly, no life on the court, and he took his chances,”<\/b> said Novak, playing his first tournament after a six-week break to heal a back injury. {nl}{nl}“My body is still getting used to this competition mode. I have to stay patient. It’s nothing I didn’t expect, but I’m winning matches and that is what matters most.”<\/b> {nl}{nl}Nole now has a 6-0 career H2H record against Baghdatis. He improved to fantastic 67-3 this year.{nl}{nl}The world no.1 will face Japanese wild card Kei Nishikori on Saturday for a place in his 12th final in 2011. <\/b>{nl}{nl}Nishikori eliminated Mikhail Kukushkin of Kazakhstan in three sets earlier today. Nole won their only previous match, at Roland Garros 2010, 6-1, 6-4, 6-4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nole came back from a set down to defeat Marcos Baghdatis 2-6, 6-2, 6-3 at the Swiss Indoors today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":3270,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101011835],"class_list":["post-1370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-basel-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370","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=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27933,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions\/27933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}