Shanghai Rolex Masters<\/a> crown on Friday as he rallied from a set and a break down to beat qualifier Mischa Zverev 3-6, 7-6 (4), 6-3 and advance into the last four.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe world no.1 reached his seventh straight semi-final in Shanghai and scored his 30th ATP Masters 1000 match win of the season in two hours and 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
Zverev secured the first set with two breaks of serve and was up 2-0 in the second set. Novak broke back immediately and converted his chance in the seventh game to move ahead, but his rival put up resistance and fought back to force a tie-breaker. Novak won it 7-4 and the match went to a decider.<\/p>\n
A break in the second game proved crucial as the top seed kept the advantage till the end to seal his 59th victory in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the most entertaining match of the tournament for me. I had to dig myself out of the hole,\u201d<\/strong> Djokovic said. \u201cHe was the better player for most of the first part of the match. He played well tactically. He slowed down the pace. I knew his game, but I haven’t played him in many, many years. I wasn’t striking the ball very well from the beginning of the match, to be honest. I was quite flat with my feet. After that I started coming to the net more, just being more constructive with the point. I played solid at the end of the second and third sets.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics<\/u>: aces (5-8), double faults (6-1), winners (45-30), unforced errors (37-21), total points won (98-93).<\/p>\n
For a place in the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event final, Novak will play against no.15 seed Roberto Bautista Agut whom he leads 5-0 in career H2H meetings. <\/strong>The Spaniard ousted ninth-seeded Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in straight sets (6-3, 6-4).
\n<\/strong><\/p>\nDjokovic is chasing his eighth tour-level title of the season and bidding to add to the Shanghai trophies he won in 2012, 2013 and 2015.<\/p>\n
Photo: Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending champion remained on course for a fourth Shanghai Rolex Masters crown as he beat Mischa Zverev 3-6, 7-6 (4), 6-3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":84662,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101012602,101011403,101011765,101012601],"class_list":["post-84664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-defending-ch","tag-quarterfinal-en","tag-shanghai","tag-shanghai-rolex-masters-2016-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84664","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=84664"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84684,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84664\/revisions\/84684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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