in 90 minutes\u00a0<\/strong>in the second round on Wednesday.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe three-time former champion made a triple break in the opening set for 6-1 in just 22 minutes.<\/p>\n
Bautista Agut provided more resistance in second set. He got broken in the second game, but managed to break back when Novak was serving for the match at 5-3, and saved four match points in the tenth game before holding for 5-5. The set went into a tie-breaker, Nole sealed it 7-4.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I played really, really well and at a high level throughout most of the match,<\/strong>” said Djokovic. “And then I had another poor game like yesterday towards the end, when I needed to close it out with a few match points. At 5-4 he served well, he fought his way through, and I have to give him credit for that. He’s a great competitor. I never played against him, so I didn’t know really what to expect. But generally I’m feeling quite confident on the court, which is a good thing.”<\/strong><\/p>\nNole won 79 per cent of points behind his first serve and converted four of 10 break point opportunities to wrap up his 10th victory of the season and book a place in the last eight of the ATP World Tour 500 event.<\/p>\n
Match statistics<\/span>: aces (6-3), double faults (2-4), total points won (79-57).<\/p>\nThe 25-year-old Belgrade native takes a 9-0 career lead into his quarter-final clash with seventh-seeded Italian Andreas Seppi who eliminated Czech Lukas Rosol 6-4, 7-6 (4) earlier today.<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch is scheduled on Thursday about 19.00 local time (16.00 CET).<\/p>\n
Photo: EPA<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak beat Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut 6-1, 7-6 to reach the last eight at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":42743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012179,101011125,101012428,113],"class_list":["post-42746","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-second-round"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42746","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=42746"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42755,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42746\/revisions\/42755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Nole](\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/dubai_03.jpg\")
<\/p>\n