{"id":158334,"date":"2022-10-01T20:46:51","date_gmt":"2022-10-01T18:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=158334"},"modified":"2022-10-02T00:14:42","modified_gmt":"2022-10-01T22:14:42","slug":"novak-powers-into-tel-aviv-open-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-powers-into-tel-aviv-open-final\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak powers into Tel Aviv Open Final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Novak Djokovic produced a high quality display on Saturday to defeat Roman Safiullin 6-1, 7-6 (3) at the <a href=\"https:\/\/tawo.co.il\/tawo-tour-main-en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tel Aviv Watergen Open<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The top seed will play for his 89th tour-level title in Sunday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n<p>Novak was dominant in the first set. He broke twice, in the second and fourth games, to move ahead.<\/p>\n<p>Safiullin raised his level in the second set. Djokovic made a break in the ninth game, but the world no.104 from Kazakhstan broke back as Nole served for the match. Novak showed composure in the tie-break to seal the win in 95 minutes, reaching his fourth final in 2022.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cIt was a very competitive match, especially in the second set,\u201d<\/strong> said Djokovic. <strong>\u201cI must say I was quite emotional on the court today in the second set, there was a lot of tension and that was also due to his aggressive style of tennis. Big serves, and he\u2019s so solid from the forehand and backhand corner. I knew that I had to stay very strong, and that he was definitely going to raise his level in the second set, which happened. I was serving for the match and played a couple of loose points, but credit to him for fighting back. It was an enjoyable evening on the court for sure.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Match statistics: aces (7-8), double faults (2-5), winners (14-22), unforced errors (10-28), total points won (74-52).<\/p>\n<p>The Serbian star won 84 per cent of the points on his first serve.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Novak will take Marin Cilic (CRO, 2, H2H 18-2) in the championship match on Sunday (17.30 CET). <\/strong>Marin defeated Constant Lestienne (FRA) 7-5, 6-3 in the semifinals.<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: Profimedia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Novak edged world no.104 from Kazakhstan, Roman Safiullin, 6-1, 7-6 (3), to reach his fourth tour level final of the season. He will take Marin Cilic (CRO, 2, H2H 18-2) in the championship match on Sunday (17.30 CET).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":158301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012178,101013258,101010433,101013259,101013260],"class_list":["post-158334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-250-en-2","tag-israel","tag-semifinal-en","tag-tel-aviv-en","tag-tel-aviv-watergen-open-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158334","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=158334"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158349,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158334\/revisions\/158349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}