Paris Masters<\/a> final against Grigor Dimitrov by beating no.5 seed Andrey Rublev 5-7, 7-6 (3), 7-5 to continue his outstanding run of form.<\/strong><\/p>\nIt was a lengthy three-set battle and it was Novak who eventually progressed past the Russian on Saturday evening to secure his place in the title match.<\/p>\n
Although Novak broke his rival\u2019s serve in the first game of the match, the Moscow native regrouped quickly and overturned the early deficit to take the opener.<\/p>\n
There was little to separate the two players in the second set until the 36-year-old Serbian star raised his game in the tie-break to level the contest.<\/p>\n
Novak grabbed the crucial break in the 12th game of the deciding set after a double fault by Rublev.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think breathing a little bit more and having a little bit more time and space to hit the ball,\u201d<\/strong> said Djokovic, when asked what had made the difference late in the match. \u201cRublev was suffocating me like a snake suffocates a frog for most of the match. He was playing an extremely high level that he possesses, but today he was off the charts, honestly. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever faced Rublev this good.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cI have been going through quite a difficult stomach virus that really made me feel terrible the past three days, but somehow I managed to find strength, find energy under the adrenaline rush of playing a match. I am proud of not giving up, fighting and believing that I can come back, which happened again and hopefully it can happen tomorrow.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics: aces (17-16), double faults (5-2), winners (36-49), unforced errors (33-36), total points won (117-113).<\/p>\n
The six-time champion will take on Dimitrov in Sunday’s championship match at 15:00 CET after the Bulgarian found a way past seventh seed Stefanos Tsitsipas.<\/strong><\/p>\nDjokovic will compete for his 40th Masters 1000 trophy.<\/p>\n
Photo: Profimedia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top seed Novak Djokovic set up a Paris Masters final against Grigor Dimitrov by beating no.5 seed Andrey Rublev 5-7, 7-6 (3), 7-5 to continue his outstanding run of form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":166164,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101012251,101011267,101013019,101010433],"class_list":["post-166152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-france-en","tag-masters-1000-en","tag-rolex-paris-masters-en","tag-semifinal-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166152","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=166152"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166168,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166152\/revisions\/166168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}