{"id":50163,"date":"2013-08-27T09:05:05","date_gmt":"2013-08-27T07:05:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=50163"},"modified":"2013-08-29T12:11:28","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T10:11:28","slug":"2013-us-open-nole-vs-berankis-in-r1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/2013-us-open-nole-vs-berankis-in-r1\/","title":{"rendered":"2013 US Open: Nole vs Berankis in R1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"US<\/p>\n

The main singles draw for the last Grand Slam tournament in 2013 was made on Thursday. Nole will open campaign in his ninth US Open<\/a> appearance against world no.126 Ricardas Berankis.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It will be Novak’s first career encounter with the 23-year-old Lithuanian.<\/p>\n

Competitions at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows (New York) began on August 26, and will last until September 9.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The world no.1 might face either German Benjamin Becker or Lukas Rosol of Czech Republic in the second round.<\/p>\n

Novak\u2019s possible rivals in the later stages of the tournament are:<\/p>\n

3rd round<\/span>: Grigor Dimitrov (BUL, 25), Lukasz Kubot (POL)
\n4th round<\/span>: Fabio Fognini (ITA, 16), Benoit Paire (FRA, 24)
\nQuarter-finals<\/span>: Juan Martin del Potro (ARG, 6), Tommy Haas (GER, 12)
\nSemi-finals<\/span>: Andy Murray (GBR, 3), Tomas Berdych (CZE, 5), Stanislas Wawrinka (SUI, 9)…<\/p>\n

Rafael Nadal (ESP, 2), David Ferrer (ESP, 4), Roger Federer (SUI, 7) … are in the bottom half of the draw, and Nole can\u2019t meet them before the finals.<\/p>\n

Last year Novak finished runner-up to Andy Murray in an epic five-set thriller that lasted four hours and 54 minutes [6-7(10), 5-7, 6-2, 6-3, 2-6]. The final tied the record as the longest at Flushing Meadows.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Djokovic won 39 matches of 46 he played in New York. This season he has a 44-8 match record (25-4 on hard).<\/p>\n

The 2011 US Open champion feels he is ready to peak for the year’s final Major event after reaching the semi-finals in Montreal and the quarter-finals in Cincinnati.<\/p>\n

“I thought I played quite decent in these two weeks. Just the both matches that I lost were 7-6 and 7-5 in the third set, and in important moments, I wasn’t finding that maybe extra strength to be calm and to play the right shots,”<\/strong> Novak said. “That’s what happens. You go through these periods. But my confidence is still there.\u201c<\/strong><\/p>\n

”I love playing Grand Slams. I had a very good record in US Open in last five, six years that I have been coming back here, so I really look forward to it.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Nole will open campaign in his ninth US Open appearance against world no.126 Ricardas Berankis (Lithuania).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":50159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101010469,101012298,101012453,101012292],"class_list":["post-50163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-grand-slam-en-2","tag-new-york-en","tag-us-open-2013-en","tag-usa-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50163","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=50163"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50417,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50163\/revisions\/50417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}