{"id":29548,"date":"2012-05-18T17:04:13","date_gmt":"2012-05-18T16:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=29548"},"modified":"2012-05-19T11:50:48","modified_gmt":"2012-05-19T10:50:48","slug":"nole-reaches-semifinal-in-rome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/nole-reaches-semifinal-in-rome\/","title":{"rendered":"Nole faces Federer in blockbuster SF"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-29573\" title=\"Fantasti\u010dni Nole eliminisao Congu!\" src=\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Novak_Rome2012_09.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"590\" height=\"424\" srcset=\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Novak_Rome2012_09.jpg 590w, https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Novak_Rome2012_09-300x216.jpg 300w, https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Novak_Rome2012_09-267x192.jpg 267w, https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Novak_Rome2012_09-312x224.jpg 312w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 590px) 100vw, 590px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>World no.1 Novak Djokovic brushed aside fifth-seeded Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 7-5, 6-1 on Friday in Rome to secure his place in the last four of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.internazionalibnlditalia.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Internazionali BNL d\u2019Italia<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Djokovic, a two-time titlist at this ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournament, broke Tsonga five times and saved two break points faced on serve for the 1 hour, 22-minute victory.<\/p>\n<p>Novak opened the match with a 3-0 lead, but Tsonga came back. Djokovic made a crucial break in the 12th game and sealed the set 7-5 in 58 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>The Serbian no.1 star took the momentum into the second set. He stormed to a 5-0 lead and booked himself a semi-final spot in Rome for the fourth time two games later.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;In the second set I played one of the best sets on clay this year and this is encouraging for the challenges to come tomorrow and with the Roland Garros and I am playing and feeling better every match I play&#8221;<\/strong>, Novak said.<\/p>\n<p><em>Match statistics:<\/em> aces (5-3), double faults (1-2), winners (21-12), unforced errors (15-20).<\/p>\n<p>With the win in their first meeting on clay, Novak leveled his H2H record with Tsonga to 5-5, and improved to a 29-4 season record.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The 24-year-old defending champion will face no.3 seed Roger Federer in Saturday\u2019s semi-final.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Swiss ousted Serbia Open 2012 winner, Italian Andreas Seppi, 6-1, 6-2 in just 54 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Nole will take a 10-14 H2H\u00a0 record into his next match against the world no.2.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;If Roger is my opponent there are no secrets, we are rivals and we have had great matches in the past 4 or 5 years. No words need to be spent about his career in tennis and he is an all-round player and equally dangerous and varies his game \u2013 change of pace in his shots which is good in this surface &#8212; another challenge and I am looking forward to and when I go on court tomorrow I will try and win.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Kg5gdZYBX6k\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"590\" height=\"330\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>World no.1 brushed aside fifth-seeded Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 7-5, 6-1 on Friday to secure his place in the last four of the Internazionali BNL d\u2019Italia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":29569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29548","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=29548"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29562,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29548\/revisions\/29562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}