{"id":74762,"date":"2015-11-03T21:35:54","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T20:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=74762"},"modified":"2015-11-04T01:01:30","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T00:01:30","slug":"novak-wins-paris-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-wins-paris-opener\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak wins Paris Masters opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Novak<\/p>\n

World no.1 Novak Djokovic opened his 2015 BNP Paribas Masters<\/a> campaign on Tuesday evening with a 7-5, 6-3 win over ATP no.40 Thomaz Belluci.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Playing Belluci for the fifth time (perfect 5-0 H2H mark), Nole converted three of six break points he held on the Brazilian’s serve.<\/p>\n

Belluci broke first, but the Serbian top seed and defending champion fought back with a double break to take the opening set in 57 minutes.<\/p>\n

A break in the eighth game of the second set was enough for the 28-year-old Belgrade native to seal his 74th victory of the season.<\/p>\n

“Bellucci is someone who likes these particular conditions, likes to create spin, especially from forehand side and plays pretty well,”<\/strong> said Djokovic. “It wasn’t easy to make a lot of winners. He was reaching out and covering the court well. So it was a good test, first indoor match for me.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Match statistics<\/u>: aces (2-0), double faults (1-2), winners (25-13), unforced errors (24-24), total points won (75-57).<\/p>\n

In the third round on Thursday, Novak will play against no.14 seed, Frenchman Gilles Simon (8-1 H2H).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Djokovic is appearing in his 171st week at no.1 in the ATP Rankings. He has surpassed John McEnroe for no.5 on the all-time list, and can now see only Jimmy Connors (268), Ivan Lendl (270), Pete Sampras (286) and Roger Federer (302) ahead of him.<\/p>\n

The three-time Paris champion is attempting to become the first player in ATP World Tour Masters 1000 history (since 1990) to win six 1000-level titles in a season.<\/p>\n

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

World no.1 opened his 2015 BNP Paribas Masters title defence on Tuesday evening with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Thomaz Belluci (BRA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":74760,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101012488,101011546,101012260,101011697],"class_list":["post-74762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-bnp-paribas-masters-2015-en","tag-defending-champion-en","tag-paris-en","tag-second-round-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74762","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=74762"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74781,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74762\/revisions\/74781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}