{"id":168404,"date":"2024-12-31T10:32:46","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T09:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=168404"},"modified":"2025-01-01T10:35:25","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T09:35:25","slug":"novak-kicks-off-2025-season-with-win-over-hijikata-in-brisbane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/uncategorized-en\/novak-kicks-off-2025-season-with-win-over-hijikata-in-brisbane\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak kicks off 2025 season with win over Hijikata in Brisbane"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic beat wild card Rinky Hijikata 6-3, 6-3 in the first round at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brisbaneinternational.com.au\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Brisbane International presented by Evie<\/a>, on Tuesday evening.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The top seed from Serbia earned a comfortable triumph against the home favourite in 75 minutes inside Pat Rafter Arena. He broke three times from five opportunities and didn&#8217;t face a single break point during the contest.<\/p>\n<p>It was Novak&#8217;s first tour-level singles match since October.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cI always expect myself to do well on the court. A win is a win,\u201d<\/strong> said Djokovic in his on-court interview. <strong>\u201cTo start off the new season with a win is very important. I think Hijikata deserves a great round of applause for his performance tonight, he was really good. He made me work, definitely, for the win tonight.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Match statistics: aces (12-7), double faults (0-1), winners (26-15), unforced errors (12-16), total points won (61-40).<\/p>\n<p><strong>For quarter-final spot at the ATP 250 event, Novak will face Gael Monfils on Thursday.<\/strong> He holds a perfect 19-0 ATP H2H record against the Frenchman.<\/p>\n<p>In the doubles competition, Nole and Nick Kyrgios came within two points of extending their run in Brisbane, but a double fault in the match tie-break proved to be a turning point against Nikola Mektic and Michael Venus. The top seeds prevailed 6-2, 3-6, 10-8 to move into the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: Profimedia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Novak beat wild card Rinky Hijikata 6-3, 6-3 in 75 minutes in the first round at the Brisbane International presented by Evie. The top seed from Serbia will face Frenchman Gael Monfils on Thursday (H2H 19-0).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":168400,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168404","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=168404"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168412,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168404\/revisions\/168412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}