It was the first ever meeting on the ATP Tour between the two players.<\/p>\n
Djere, no.50 in the ATP rankings, produced an inspiring display and was on the verge of the biggest victory of his career, but the two-time former champion battled back from a set and a break down to seal the triumph in three hours and 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
Laslo stormed through the first set with two breaks of serve, and was leading by a break in the second set. Novak managed to break back, forcing a tie-break, which he eventually won.<\/p>\n
Djokovic dug deep to keep his hopes of a third title at the ATP 250 event alive. The two had exchanged breaks once early in the deciding third set, and a nervy contest went to another tie-break. Nole closed it out to score his 992nd Tour level victory and is now eight steps away from joining a very exclusive club and reaching the 1000 match wins milestone.<\/p>\n
“Important win, mentally and emotionally for me, it will help my confidence,”<\/strong> Novak said.<\/p>\n Next up for Novak is seventh seed and another young gun from Serbia, Miomir Kecmanovic (Thursday, 17:00 CET), who outplayed Australian John Millman in straight sets (6-4, 7-6).<\/strong><\/p>\n It will be a rematch of their 2021 Serbia Open last eight encounter. Djokovic then won it 6-1, 6-3.<\/p>\n The 20-time Grand Slam titlist is playing in just his third tournament of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" World no.1 beat fellow Serb Laslo Djere 2-6, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (4) in Belgrade on Wednesday to reach the quarter-finals at the Serbia Open. Next up for Novak is seventh seed and another young gun from Serbia, Miomir Kecmanovic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":153287,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012178,101012319,113,101013184],"class_list":["post-153288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-250-en-2","tag-belgrade-en","tag-second-round","tag-serbia-open-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153288","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=153288"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153334,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153288\/revisions\/153334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/so2022_07.jpg\")
<\/p>\n