{"id":46067,"date":"2013-05-14T17:20:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-14T16:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=46067"},"modified":"2013-05-15T14:53:24","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T13:53:24","slug":"novak-eases-though-in-rome-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-eases-though-in-rome-opener\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak eases through Rome opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sigurna<\/p>\n

Top seed Novak Djokovic began his title bid in Rome with a straight-sets win over Albert Montanes on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The Serbian eased to a 6-2, 6-3 victory against his Spanish opponent, ranked 89th in the world, to reach the third round at the Internazionali BNL d\u2019Italia<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nole delighted his fans on Centrale with some brilliant shotmaking. After a slow start, he rallied from an early break down to take the first set 6-2 in 38 minutes.<\/p>\n

Djokovic raced to a 3-0 lead in the second set. He brought up three match points in the ninth game, but only one was needed, as the world no.1 secured the win with an ace.<\/p>\n

“This win means a lot to me because I didn’t have a great week in Madrid. I didn’t play much, I didn’t practise much,”<\/strong> said Novak.\u00a0“I worked very hard to prepare for this tournament. I need to be emotionally and physically fit and I think I’m heading in the right direction.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Match statistics<\/span>: aces (4-1), double faults (0-4), winners (20-14), unforced errors (22-25), total points won (66-42).<\/p>\n

Novak will next play against world no.23 Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine (2-0) who got a walkover after no.15 seed Stanislas Wawrinka withdrew from the event.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 25-year-old Belgrade native has enjoyed success at the Foro Italico in past years, winning a pair of titles in 2008 and 2011.<\/p>\n

Novak has a 27-3 match record this year (7-1 on clay) with titles at the Australian Open, the Dubai Duty Free Tennis championships and the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters.<\/p>\n

He has now spent 81 weeks at no.1,\u00a0which is ninth-most (since Aug. 23, 1973), behind\u00a0Federer, Sampras, Lendl, Connors, J. McEnroe, Borg, Nadal and Agassi.<\/p>\n

Photo: Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nole eased to a 6-2, 6-3 victory against Spaniard Albert Montanes in 70 minutes on Tuesday to reach the last 16 at the Foro Italico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":46062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101012444,101011200,113],"class_list":["post-46067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-internazionali-bnl-ditalia-en","tag-rome-2013-en","tag-second-round"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46067","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=46067"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46128,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46067\/revisions\/46128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}