{"id":1379,"date":"2011-11-22T00:17:31","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T23:17:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-04-22T10:04:42","modified_gmt":"2012-04-22T09:04:42","slug":"novak-fights-off-match-point-captures-70th-season-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-fights-off-match-point-captures-70th-season-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak fights off match point, captures 70th season win!"},"content":{"rendered":"

{nl}Photo: Reuters<\/font>{nl}{nl}Nole has scored his first win in Group A at the 2011 Barclays ATP World Tour finals in London.{nl}{nl}The top seed, who captured the 2008 Masters Cup title in Shanghai, needed 2 hours and 38 minutes to clinch his 70th victory of the season. He beat world no.7 Tomas Berdych of Czech Republic 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (3).<\/b>{nl}{nl}Berdych looked confident at the beginning of the match. He wrapped up the first set 6-3 in 49 minutes. {nl}{nl}Nole responded in equally impressive fashion to level things up.{nl}{nl}The 24-year-old Belgrade native was broken in the sixth game of the final set, but he fought back immediately and held to equalise to 4-4. At 5-6, Nole was serving to stay in the match. He double-faulted to give the Czech a match point, but got out of the unpleasant situation and took the set into a tie-breaker. Our champ has shown his mental strength once again. He gained control, rolled to a 5-1 lead and served it out 7-3.{nl}{nl}“It was the toughest match probably since the US Open,” <\/b>admitted Nole. “I mean, I\u2019m not very satisfied with my performance tonight. I know I wasn’t playing on top of my game. But a win is a win in the end.” {nl}{nl}”I knew that my opponent tonight is an unpredictable player, who has a powerful groundstrokes and great serve. If he’s on, if he feels the ball well, it’s difficult to compete with him. That’s what happened. I think he made pressure, a lot of pressure, on my serve, especially the second serve. He was stepping in. I went back. I was too passive.”{nl}{nl}”It would mean a lot to win the tournament. It’s a crown for all the achievements I had. It would be a fantastic way to end the best season in my career. But look, I need to step up a little bit. I need to raise the level of performance in order to have a chance to go all the way.”<\/b>{nl}{nl}Match statistics<\/u>: aces (3-6), double faults (3-4), winners (17-32), unforced errors (33-42).{nl}{nl}Novak will take on David Ferrer in his second Group A round-robin match on Wednesday. The Spaniard defeated no.3 seed Andy Murray in straight sets.<\/b>{nl}{nl}Nole has a 6-4 advantage in their head-to-head. The Serb won their last encounter in the quarter-finals of Madrid Masters, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nole has scored his first win in Group A at the 2011 Barclays ATP World Tour finals in London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":3289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[734],"class_list":["post-1379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-barclays-atp-world-tour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379","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=1379"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27925,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379\/revisions\/27925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}