{"id":166696,"date":"2024-01-14T13:32:52","date_gmt":"2024-01-14T12:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=166696"},"modified":"2024-01-15T08:51:01","modified_gmt":"2024-01-15T07:51:01","slug":"ao-novak-overcomes-challenge-from-world-no-178-moves-into-r2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/ao-novak-overcomes-challenge-from-world-no-178-moves-into-r2\/","title":{"rendered":"AO: Novak overcomes challenge from world no.178, moves to R2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From a set up and in control, Novak looked set for a comfortable Sunday evening at the <a href=\"https:\/\/ausopen.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Australian Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>However, the Serbian star survived a challenge to overcome the 18-year-old Croat Dino Prizmic 6-2, 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4 and reached the second round in Melbourne for the 17th time in 19 appearances.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the pair\u2019s first ATP H2H meeting, Djokovic started well. He broke twice to race to a one set lead.<\/p>\n<p>The second set was more competitive. The players had exchanged breaks once before the 2023 Roland Garros Junior champion clinched the tie-break to level the contest.<\/p>\n<p>The third set saw five breaks of serve. The Croatian hope broke on two occasions, while the 10-time titlist converted his break point chances three times.<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic was in control at the beginning of the fourth set. He stormed to a 4-0 lead before Prizmic managed to take one break back. Novak sealed the victory four games later, after four hours of play.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cHe deserved every applause, every credit that he got tonight,\u201d<\/strong> said Novak after Prizmic left the court to a standing ovation from the Melbourne crowd. <strong>\u201cHe\u2019s an amazing player, so mature for his age and he handled himself on the court incredibly well. It could easily have been his match as well. He was a break up in the third, he fought even though he was 0-4 and a break point down in the fourth set. He showed great mentality and resilience. He really made me run for my money tonight.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Match statistics: aces (11-7), double faults (1-7), winners (40-31), unforced errors (49-42), total points won (139-113).<\/p>\n<p><strong>In the second round on Wednesday, Djokovic will play against Alexei Popyrin (AUS).<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Serbian and world no.1 Novak Djokovic survived a challenge to overcome the 18-year-old Croat Dino Prizmic 6-2, 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4, winning in four hours to reach the second round in Melbourne for the 17th time in 19 appearances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":166690,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012354,101013386,101010469,101012415,101011626],"class_list":["post-166696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-australia-en","tag-australian-open-2024-en","tag-grand-slam-en-2","tag-melbourne-en","tag-round-1-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166696","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166696"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166714,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166696\/revisions\/166714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}