Australian Open<\/a> trophy for a record-extending 10th time, following a 7-5, 6-1, 6-2 victory over world no.35 Tommy Paul in the Rod Laver Arena evening session.<\/strong><\/p>\nNovak stormed to a 5-1 lead breaking his rival twice, but the unseeded American won four straight games to recover from a double-break deficit and get back into the first set. Djokovic regained his focus and composure, and with his powerful game earned himself a decisive break in the 12th game to claim the opener.<\/p>\n
From there it was smooth sailing for the 35-year-old Belgrade native. He broke twice in each of the next two sets to secure triumph after two hours and 20 minutes of play, serving out the match to love.<\/p>\n
“I was really fortunate to hold my nerve towards the end of the first set,”<\/strong> Djokovic said. “It was a key. After that I started swinging through the ball more, so I’m just really pleased to get through to another final. This is exactly what I hoped for to happen, to fight for another Australian Open. Experience helps, it\u2019s a confidence booster that I never lost a final, but the match has to be won on the court.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics: aces (12-4), double faults (5-0), winners (31-8), unforced errors (39-32), total points won (100-68).<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Novak will play his seventh straight match under the lights on Melbourne’s main stage.<\/p>\n
The 21-time Grand Slam titlist will face Stefanos Tsitsipas for a 13th time in their careers, when they meet for the Championship trophy and the World no.1 spot!<\/strong><\/p>\nThe third-seeded Greek defeated Russian Karen Khachanov 7-6 (2), 6-4, 6-7 (6), 6-3.<\/p>\n
Photo: AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak’s 7-5, 6-1, 6-2 semifinal victory over American Tommy Paul on Friday was his 27th win in a row in Melbourne. In Sunday’s final (09:00 CET), Djokovic will face third seed Stefanos Tsitsipas for a 13th time in their careers for the Championship trophy and the World no.1 spot!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":162608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101011992,101013305,101011740,101012051,101010433],"class_list":["post-162613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-australia","tag-australian-open-2023-en","tag-grand-slam","tag-melbourne","tag-semifinal-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162613","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=162613"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162707,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162613\/revisions\/162707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}