Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships<\/a> winner, Novak Djokovic, advanced to the second round of the ATP World Tour 500 tournament with a 6-1, 6-4 win over his friend and compatriot Viktor Troicki (44).<\/strong><\/p>\nNole cruised through his opening match in 67 minutes.<\/p>\n
The Australian Open reigning champion needed just 21 minutes to race through the first set, breaking Troicki in the second and sixth games for convincing 6-1.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old Serbian star made a break in the third game of the second set and consolidated it for 3-1 lead. Troicki broke back in the eighth game to level at 4-all, but Novak broke once again and served out the set and match converting his second match point.<\/p>\n
“That was a good way to start, especially in the first set, considering the fact I haven’t played an official tournament for three, four weeks,”<\/strong> Novak said. “I wanted to be extra focused on the court today, because I also knew he has a big serve, as he had proven tonight, and can be very dangerous on these courts. This is one of the fastest hard courts on the tour that I have experienced outdoors.\u00a0It\u2019s never easy when you’re playing somebody that you know for such a long time – he’s a close friend on and off the court, but when you’re playing a match, there is no doubt that we both want to win.”<\/strong><\/p>\nThe top seed, who triumphed at the event in 2009, 2010 and 2011, capitalised on four of his nine break points and improved to a 24-3 record in Dubai.<\/p>\n
Match statistics<\/span>: aces (1-6), double faults (2-1), total points won (66-42).<\/p>\nDjokovic will face world no.55 Roberto Bautista Agut in the second round, on Wednesday about 21.00 local time (18.00 CET).<\/strong> The Spaniard beat Belgian youngster David Goffin 6-2, 7-5.<\/p>\nNovak and Agut have never met before.<\/p>\n
Photos: EPA<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nole opened his Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships campaign with a 6-1, 6-4 win over Viktor Troicki and set up second round match against Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":42698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012179,101011125,101012428,310],"class_list":["post-42681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-500-en","tag-dubai-2013-en","tag-dubai-duty-free-tennis-championships","tag-first-round"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42681","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=42681"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42688,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42681\/revisions\/42688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Novak](\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/dubai_02.jpg\")
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