Rogers Cup presented by National Bank<\/a> on Wednesday, with a 7-5, 7-6 (3) victory in one hour and 43 minutes.<\/strong><\/p>\nNovak, playing his first match after Wimbledon, won 77 per cent of points on his first serve.<\/p>\n
Games went with serve until 5-5 in the opening set, when Djokovic converted on his first break point chance and then served out the set in the next game.<\/p>\n
Novak and Muller traded breaks twice in the second set. The Belgrade native earned a chance to serve out the match at 5-4, but the former world no.1 junior player responded with an immediate break back. He took a 3-1 lead in the tie-break, but Nole won the final six points to take the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cGilles is very difficult player to play against in quick conditions. Takes away the time of the opponent. He serves and volleys second serve a lot, as well, one of the rare guys that does that,\u201d<\/strong> said Novak. \u201cHe likes to play quick, and I think the warm day like today played a lot in his favor. I managed start of the match well and get set and a break up, and then I dropped my serve twice in the second set. Those are the only, let’s say, downsides to the match today. Other than that I’m quite pleased with the way I held my nerves and was focused and just overall performance was very pleasing considering it was the first hard court match for a long time.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics<\/u>: aces (3-11), double faults (3-3), winners (19-31), unforced errors (14-26), total points won (80-63).<\/p>\n
Novak will next play against Czech qualifier Radek Stepanek (11-1 H2H record).<\/strong><\/p>\nThe 29-year-old Serb is attempting to capture his 30th ATP Masters 1000 title. He improved to a 47-4 record on the season.<\/p>\n
Djokovic is making his 11th appearance at the Rogers Cup. He won three titles in Canada (2007, 2011, 2012) and finished runner-up to Andy Murray last year.<\/p>\n
Photo: Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nole defeated Gilles Muller 7-5, 7-6 (3) for a place in the third round of the Canada Masters on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":82959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101012106,101011267,113,101012577],"class_list":["post-82963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-canada","tag-masters-1000-en","tag-second-round","tag-toronto-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82963","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=82963"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83038,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82963\/revisions\/83038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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