Internazionali BNL d\u2019Italia<\/a> on Friday evening.<\/strong><\/p>\nMaking his 17th appearance in Rome, the defending champion moved past the Argentine in one hour and 51 minutes.<\/p>\n
Despite a slow start in the first set, the 35-year-old Serbian star eventually found his rhythm and earned his 18th tour-level win of the season.<\/p>\n
Novak dropped his serve in the first game, but broke back in the sixth to level. The top seed won four consecutive points from 3-5 down in the tie-break to wrap up the opening set after 75 minutes of play.<\/p>\n
Djokovic grabbed an early break in the second set, and broke once more in the seventh game. He served it out to love to seal his place in R3 .<\/p>\n
Match statistics: aces (1-4), double faults (0-2), winners (26-13), unforced errors (30-20), total points won (72-57).<\/p>\n
“Still not the desired level, still finding the shots and finding that groove on the court,”<\/strong> Novak said in his on-court interview. “It’s always a little bit tricky playing someone for the first time. He’s a clay-court specialist. He started better than I did, I started pretty slow, but I found my groove towards the end of the first. The second set was good, especially the last three or four games. I’m happy with the way I closed out the match.”<\/strong><\/p>\nNovak next faces Grigor Dimitrov (BUL, 26, H2H 10-1) who beat Stan Wawrinka 6-4, 7-6.<\/p>\n
The six-time Rome titlist is aiming for a record-extending 39th Masters 1000 crown.<\/p>\n
Photo: Profimedia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak advanced into the third round, defeating Argentine Tomas Martin Etcheverry 7-6 (5) 6-2 at the ATP Masters 1000 event. Next up is Grigor Dimitrov (BUL, 26, H2H 10-1).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":164852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101013337,101013055,101011267,101012240,113],"class_list":["post-164814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-internazionali-bnl-ditalia-2023-en","tag-italian-open","tag-masters-1000-en","tag-rome-en","tag-second-round"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164814","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=164814"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164850,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164814\/revisions\/164850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}