Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships<\/a> title on Tuesday with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over world no.63 Vasek Pospisil in the first round.<\/strong><\/p>\nNole won 78% of points on his first serve in the 78-minute win. He broke three times from four opportunities and saved two of the three break points he faced, improving to a 3-0 mark against the Canadian in their ATP Head2Head series.<\/p>\n
“I’m still looking for that rhythm on the court,”<\/strong> said Djokovic. “But I managed to stay mentally tough. I was patient in rallies. As soon as we get through the rally, I have a better chance of winning. He’s a very flashy player, aggressive, goes after his shots. He served well first set. I just utilised my opportunities. When his first serve percentage dropped, I knew that’s my chance. I won a lot of those second serve points. I think that’s what decided the match, even though my serve wasn’t at the level where I wanted it to be today. So hopefully the next match can be better.”<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics<\/span>: aces (5-2), double faults (2-6), winners (17-16), unforced errors (23-38), total points won (65-53).<\/p>\nNovak will take a perfect 3-0 record into his second round match against no.107 in the ATP rankings, Andrey Golubev of Kazakhstan, on Wednesday.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe 27-year-old Belgrade native is making his ninth appearance at the ATP 500 hard-court event (31-4), lifting the trophy in 2009-11 and 2013.<\/p>\n
Djokovic improved to a 10-1 W\/L record on the season, highlighted by winning his eighth Grand Slam crown at the Australian Open (d. Murray).<\/p>\n
The world no.1 is bidding to become the 12th player in the Open Era to win 50 titles. He is currently tied with his coach Boris Becker (49).<\/p>\n
Photo: Nida Alibhai<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The top seed opened his bid for a fifth Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships title with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Vasek Pospisil on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":66606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012179,101011616,101012429,310],"class_list":["post-66608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-500-en","tag-dubai-2015-en","tag-dubai-duty-free-tennis-championships-en","tag-first-round"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66608","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=66608"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66631,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66608\/revisions\/66631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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