Nitto ATP Finals<\/a> run with a 6-3, 6-2 win over eighth seed Diego Schwartzman on Monday.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe top seed defeated the Argentine debutant in 78 minutes in his first match at the season finale to move to 1-0 in Group Tokyo 1970.<\/p>\n
After dropping serve early in the match, Novak recovered quickly to break his rival four times, twice in the first and second sets.<\/p>\n
With his sixth win in as many ATP H2H meetings against Schwartzman, Novak equalled Andrey Rublev\u2019s Tour-leading total of 40 victories this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe beginning of the match wasn\u2019t that great for me. He broke my serve in the third game and I managed to break back. It was a close encounter until I broke his serve at 4-3 and managed to close out the first set,\u201d<\/strong> said Djokovic in his on-court interview. \u201dIn the second set, I started swinging through the ball a little more with a bit less hesitation from both corners. I am very pleased with the way I played, especially in the second set. It was a good opening match and I\u2019m looking forward to the next one.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics: aces (7-1), double faults (2-1), winners (26-11), unforced errors (14-13), total points won (59-40).<\/p>\n
Novak is pursuing his sixth trophy at The O2. The 33-year-old Serbian star now owns a 37-14 record at the event.<\/p>\n
Djokovic will play his second round robin match on Wednesday at 20:00 local time (21:00 CET) against no.4 seed Daniil Medvedev. <\/strong><\/p>\nThe Russian outplayed Alexander Zverev (GER, 6) in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4, in the second match of Group Tokyo 1970.<\/p>\n
Photo: AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak started his Nitto ATP Finals run with a 6-3, 6-2 win over eighth seed Diego Schwartzman. The world no.1 beat the Argentine season finale debutant in 78 minutes to move to 1-0 in Group Tokyo 1970.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":138718,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012193,101013027,101013035,101011545,101012498],"class_list":["post-138722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-london-en","tag-nitto-atp-finals-en","tag-rr1-en","tag-season-finale","tag-the-o2-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138722","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=138722"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138764,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138722\/revisions\/138764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}