With this win, the Serbian star made history once again, recording his 100th career victory at Melbourne Park.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe match on Rod Laver Arena lasted exactly two hours.<\/p>\n
Novak came out strong, breaking his rival\u2019s serve in the second game, and took an early 3-0 lead. He stayed in full control and comfortably closed the first set 6-3.<\/p>\n
In the second set, Djokovic raised his level even more and completely dominated. He broke the Spaniard’s serve twice and confidently won the set 6-2 to go up 2:0.<\/p>\n
Novak continued to play at a very high level in the third set, and with another double break he finished the match in style.<\/p>\n
“Tonight’s performance was great, I can’t complain about anything. I served very well,”<\/strong> said Djokovic. “It’s always a challenge to kick-start the tournament on the right note and send the right signal not only to yourself but your opponents watching you play. I have a couple of days without a match to recover my body. I’m using every hour to get in shape for the next challenge.”<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics: aces (14-2), double faults (0-6), winners (49-14), unforced errors (21-26), total points won (98-57).<\/p>\n
Novak will next face 23-year-old Italian Francesco Maestrelli, who reached the main draw through the qualifying rounds.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe world no.141 is making his Grand Slam debut and has never played Novak before. The second round match is scheduled on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Photo: Profimedia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the first round of the 2026 Australian Open, Novak defeated Pedro Martinez 6-3, 6-2, 6-2. With this win, the Serbian star made history once again, recording his 100th career victory at Melbourne Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":170030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101011992,101013508,101012476,101010469,101012051,101011059],"class_list":["post-170034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-australia","tag-australian-open-2026-en","tag-first-round-en","tag-grand-slam-en-2","tag-melbourne","tag-record"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170034","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=170034"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170047,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170034\/revisions\/170047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}