Rogers Cup presented by National Bank<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\nTaking to Centre Court at 7 pm, Novak was welcomed by a cheering crowd in his first match on hard courts, his favourite surface, after four months.<\/p>\n
There were many break point opportunities on both sides in the opening set, Nole converted his chances in the sixth and eighth games for 6-2 in 41 minutes.<\/p>\n
A break in the eighth game of the second set was enough for the world no.2 to record his 46th win of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first match it was a decent performance,\u201d<\/strong> said Djokovic. \u201cObviously at the start we played very long opening four games, and I was struggling to find the rhythm\u2026 It\u2019s totally different conditions, time zone, ball bounce, everything. But I love playing on hard court. It\u2019s my favourite surface. Obviously when I needed to play well and be patient, I\u2019ve done that really well today. Serve was working really good, so that\u2019s a positive.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics<\/span>: aces (8-4), double faults (1-1), winners (22-19), unforced errors (16-26).<\/p>\nNovak will next play American Sam Querrey (35) who upset no.13 seed Kei Nishikori of Japan.<\/strong><\/p>\nNole has a 3-0 H2H record against the San Francisco native. They last met in 2010, in the Davis Cup first round tie between Serbia and USA (6-2, 7-6(4), 2-6, 6-3).<\/p>\n
The third round match was scheduled on Thursday, but both matinee and evening sessions were cancelled due to rain.<\/p>\n
If Novak beats Querrey (Friday, 13.00 local time), he will also play his quarter-final clash against Tommy Haas or Radek Stepanek on Friday evening.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe 25-year-old Serbian star triumphed at the Rogers Cup last year in his first tournament as the world no.1, and set a new record by claiming his fifth ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title of the season. He also won on his Canada debut in 2007.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great to be back in Canada for the Rogers Cup,\u201d<\/strong> Nole said. \u201cI had lots of success in Canada in previous years, and I love coming back here and playing here. Lots of support, lots of people from ex-Yugoslavian region that live here and come and support. People in Canada love tennis and appreciate the tennis players. For us it\u2019s great to be a part of such a great event.\u201d<\/strong>
\n<\/em><\/p>\nPhoto: Tennis Canada<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending champion secured a third-round spot with a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Australian Bernard Tomic in 70 minutes at Rogers Cup. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":33241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101010614,113,101010615],"class_list":["post-33247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-rogers-cupen","tag-second-round","tag-torontoen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33247","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=33247"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33353,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33247\/revisions\/33353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/toronto_02_tennis_canada.jpg\" "\\"Siguran")
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