{"id":70706,"date":"2015-06-29T16:33:41","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T14:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=70706"},"modified":"2015-06-29T19:20:44","modified_gmt":"2015-06-29T17:20:44","slug":"novak-opens-wimbledon-title-defence-with-6-4-6-4-6-4-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-opens-wimbledon-title-defence-with-6-4-6-4-6-4-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak opens Wimbledon title defence with 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Auto<\/p>\n

World no.1 Novak Djokovic began his Wimbledon<\/a> title defence campaign on a positive note on Monday afternoon, beating Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 in two hours and two minutes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 28-year-old Serbian star is the no.1 seed for the fourth straight year at the All England Club. It was his first competitive match since the French Open final.<\/p>\n

Happy to have advanced into the second round, the 2011 and 2014 champion bent down to kiss the grass-court after his final shot, then moved on to acknowledge the crowd.<\/p>\n

“It’s great to be back. This is the cradle of our sport. It is a privilege and honour to open this year’s Wimbledon on Centre Court,\u201c<\/strong> Novak said. “I had a very tough opponent who can be very tricky on all surfaces, especially on grass, but I managed to stay composed. I made the crucial breaks at 5-4 in all three sets. Hopefully it can stay that way for me.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Match statistics<\/u>: aces (12-6), double faults (1-4), winners (36-25), unforced errors (21-22), total points won (103-84).<\/p>\n

Novak goes on to face world no.91 Jarkko Nieminen of Finland on Wednesday (5-1 H2H record). <\/strong>Nieminen beat 2002 titlist Lleyton Hewitt in five sets (3-6, 6-3, 4-6, 6-0, 11-9).
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Defending champion beat German Philipp Kohlschreiber in two hours and two minutes on Monday to reach the second round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":70703,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101011546,310,101012193,101011449,101011677],"class_list":["post-70706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-defending-champion-en","tag-first-round","tag-london-en","tag-the-championships-en","tag-wimbledon-2015-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70706","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=70706"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70762,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70706\/revisions\/70762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}