{"id":55989,"date":"2014-02-25T17:47:42","date_gmt":"2014-02-25T16:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=55989"},"modified":"2014-02-25T20:30:09","modified_gmt":"2014-02-25T19:30:09","slug":"novak-advances-in-dubai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-advances-in-dubai\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak advances to second round in Dubai"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pobeda<\/p>\n

Top seed and four-time champion Novak Djokovic opened his Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships<\/a> title defence with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan on Tuesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The match lasted one hour and 24 minutes.<\/p>\n

Novak landed 72 % of his first service points and broke three times from 12 opportunities, saving all four break points he faced.<\/p>\n

“It wasn’t as easy as the scoreline indicates,”<\/strong> said Djokovic. “I needed to work for my games. My serve worked really well in the second set, and it helped me to get some free points. I haven’t played an official match for four, five weeks, obviously it takes its toll on the court. I practised a lot. I put in a lot of hours on the court, trying to develop my game, to get myself in the shape, and it’s going to click sooner or later.”<\/strong>
\n
\nMatch statistics<\/span>: aces (6-3), double faults (2-1), winners (26-10), unforced errors (23-17), total points won (76-61).<\/p>\n

Novak will next face world no.51 Roberto Bautista Agut. He beat the Spaniard in their only previous encounter, in the same event stage last year (6-1, 7-6).<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 26-year-old Belgrade native is biding for a fifth crown at the ATP World Tour 500 tournament. He lifted the Dubai trophy in 2009-11 and 2013.<\/p>\n

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

Top seed and four-time champion opened his title defence with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":55981,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012179,133,101011387,101012428,310,101012199],"class_list":["post-55989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-500-en","tag-defending-champion","tag-dubai-2014-en","tag-dubai-duty-free-tennis-championships","tag-first-round","tag-uae-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55989","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=55989"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56002,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55989\/revisions\/56002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}