{"id":155568,"date":"2022-05-25T19:04:38","date_gmt":"2022-05-25T17:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=155568"},"modified":"2022-05-25T23:02:48","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T21:02:48","slug":"novak-eases-into-third-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-eases-into-third-round\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak eases into third round"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A straight-sets win for Nole as he chases another Grand Slam trophy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>World no.1 and reigning French Open champion Novak Djokovic looked in top form on Wednesday during a second-round victory over Alex Molcan on Court Suzanne-Lenglen to stay on course for a third <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rolandgarros.com\/en-us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Roland Garros<\/a> title.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The top seed produced a solid display against the Slovak to record a 6-2, 6-3, 7-6 (4) win in two hours and 16 minutes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Novak made three breaks in the first two sets, while Alex didn&#8217;t earn a single break point chance.<\/p>\n<p>The third set was more competitive, as Molcan put up a good fight and resistance. Djokovic broke first, but the Presov native responded immediately to level things up. The 35-year-old Serbian star stepped up in the tie-break and closed out his 83rd win at the event.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cI&#8217;m pleased with the way I&#8217;m feeling on the court and the way I\u2019ve been striking the ball,\u201d<\/strong> said Novak. <strong>\u201cToday was also under challenging conditions and playing against a specialist on clay, someone that is a tricky opponent and coming off from the Lyon final last week. It was never going to be an easy match, but I performed very well.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Match statistics: aces (10-4), double faults (0-2), winners (40-31), unforced errors (19-34).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Novak will play Slovenia&#8217;s Aljaz Bedene (3-0 H2H record) on Friday for a place in the last 16.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Bedene rallied from a set down to beat Pablo Cuevas (URU) 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (5), 6-4.<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>World no.1 and reigning French Open champion looked in top form during a second-round 6-2, 6-3, 7-6 (4) victory over Alex Molcan to stay on course for a third Roland Garros title. He will play Slovenia&#8217;s Aljaz Bedene (3-0 H2H record) for a place in the last 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":155566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101011211,101010469,101012260,101013239,113],"class_list":["post-155568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-french-open-en","tag-grand-slam-en-2","tag-paris-en","tag-roland-garros-2022-en","tag-second-round"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155568","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=155568"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155648,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155568\/revisions\/155648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}