Nole Express powered into the Rome Masters last eight!<\/p>\n
Top seed and defending champion Novak Djokovic advanced to the the quarter-finals of the Internazionali BNL d\u2019Italia, following a convincing 6-2, 6-1 victory over Alejandro Davidovich Fokina on Thursday.<\/strong><\/p>\n The Serbian star improved to 14-2 this season and 57-9 at the ATP Masters 1000 event in Rome, after a dominant 70-minute performance on Campo Centrale.<\/p>\n The 48th ranked Spaniard opened the match with a break, but Novak responded immediately, moving ruthlessly through gears to break three times in the first set and twice in the second.<\/p>\n \u201cI played well. He started well and broke my serve in the first game. I made some errors, but I managed to break back right away and establish the control and consistency on the court. From the back of the court I was just a bit more solid than him,\u201d<\/strong> Djokovic said in his post-match interview. \u201cHe made some unforced errors and double faults in key moments, which helped me get that necessary break forward. I played at least 20 or 30 % better than I did against Fritz a few days ago. I am on a good trajectory and hopefully tomorrow will be even better.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Match statistics: aces (4-0), double faults (1-3), winners (16-11), unforced errors (17-30), total points won (64-40).<\/p>\n Novak will face fifth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas (def. Matteo Berrettini in straight sets) in the last eight on Friday.<\/strong><\/p>\n Djokovic owns a 4-2 ATP Head2Head lead over the Greek.<\/p>\n Looking ahead to the next challenge, Novak said: \u201cMy next match will be against a Top 10 player. Tsitsipas won Monte-Carlo. I am going to do my best to win that match,\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Photo: Profimedia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Defending champion advanced to the the quarter-finals of the Internazionali BNL d\u2019Italia, following a convincing 6-2, 6-1 victory over Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in 70 minutes. Novak will face fifth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":143486,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101012444,101013055,101011267,101012240,1039],"class_list":["post-143488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-internazionali-bnl-ditalia-en","tag-italian-open","tag-masters-1000-en","tag-rome-en","tag-third-round"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143488","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=143488"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143538,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143488\/revisions\/143538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}