{"id":65176,"date":"2015-01-20T06:52:43","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T05:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=65176"},"modified":"2015-01-21T09:42:03","modified_gmt":"2015-01-21T08:42:03","slug":"novak-opens-quest-for-fifth-australian-open-crown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-opens-quest-for-fifth-australian-open-crown\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak opens quest for fifth Australian Open crown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-65173\" src=\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ausopen2015_06.jpg\" alt=\"Novak bez izgubljenog seta do drugog kola Australijen Opena\" width=\"590\" height=\"393\" srcset=\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ausopen2015_06.jpg 590w, https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ausopen2015_06-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ausopen2015_06-267x178.jpg 267w, https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ausopen2015_06-264x176.jpg 264w, https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ausopen2015_06-150x100.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 590px) 100vw, 590px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>World no.1 Novak Djokovic started his quest to become only the second man in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ausopen.com\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Australian Open<\/a> history to win five titles (Roy Emerson won his 6th crown in 1967).<\/p>\n<p><strong>The top seed and a winner of seven Major trophies beat qualifier from Slovenia Aljaz Bedene 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 in the afternoon session on Rod Laver Arena on Tuesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Novak broke four times from eight opportunities for victory in one hour and 49 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic faced two break points in the fifth game of the first set, but held and went on to break Bedene in the eighth game and serve it out 6-3 after 36 minutes of play.<\/p>\n<p>The 27-year-old Serb kept the momentum going in the second set. He broke twice for 6-2.<\/p>\n<p>A break in the fifth game of the third set was enough for Nole to seal the win and reach the second round in Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;He did surprise me,&#8221;<\/strong> said Djokovic.<strong> &#8220;I had a difficult time reading his serve. The courts are a bit faster than in the past two years. So if you have a big serve, know how to use it, it&#8217;s a big advantage on these courts. He&#8217;s a good player. He reached the finals in Chennai. Qualified again here. He felt confident. He had nothing to lose. On the other hand, I managed to stay tough, overcome some kind of challenges I faced at the beginning of the match. I played much more comfortably in the rest of the match. I think I did well in terms of responding to the slow start today, feeling a little bit rusty on the court. So hopefully the next one will be even better.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Match statistics<\/span>: aces (8-12), double faults (3-3), winners (30-22), unforced errors (29-36), total points won (98-70).<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fglPJtfl7KM\" width=\"590\" height=\"332\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Novak will next face world no.88 Andrey Kuznetsov of Russia who beat Spaniard Albert Ramos-Vinolas in four sets. It will be their first career meeting.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>World no.1 opened his Australian Open campaign with a 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 win over qualifier from Slovenia Aljaz Bedene (116) on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":65174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101011597,310,101010469,101012051],"class_list":["post-65176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-australian-open-2015-en","tag-first-round","tag-grand-slam-en-2","tag-melbourne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65176","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=65176"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65223,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65176\/revisions\/65223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}