Barclays ATP World Tour Finals<\/a> in London on Sunday.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe first “Ivan Lendl” Group clash at The O2 Arena lasted just over two hours. It was the fourth victory for Djokovic in as many career meetings with the 23-year-old Austrian.<\/p>\n
Games went with serve in the opening set. Thiem had his first set point at 6-3 in the tie-breaker, but he double-faulted twice and then put a backhand into the net to make it 6-6. Novak had a chance, too, leading 9-8, but he couldn’t close it out with Thiem serving. The eighth seed finally won it on his seventh set point with a forehand winner.<\/p>\n
Novak recovered quickly and produced an impressive display of power tennis in the remainder, breaking his rival three times in the second set and twice in the third.<\/p>\n
\u201cDominic started very well, he deserved the first set. We played on a high level from the very first point. He was going for his shots. The tie-break was deservedly won by him,\u201d<\/strong> said Djokovic. \u201cAfter that, I managed to regroup and play very well. I felt comfortable on the court in the second set and made him play an extra shot.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics<\/u>: aces (3-4), double faults (0-3), total points won (101-75).<\/p>\n
Novak next plays Milos Raonic (Tuesday at 21:00 CET). The Belgrade native has a perfect 7-0 record against the Canadian who beat Gael Monfils in opener 6-3, 6-4.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\nDjokovic is looking to win an unprecedented fifth successive crown at the ATP World Tour Finals, which would put him level with Roger Federer\u2019s tournament record of six titles.<\/p>\n
Photo: AFP \/ Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak won his opening match at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals, rallying to beat Dominic Thiem 6-7(10), 6-0, 6-2 on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":85222,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101010839,101011671,101012193,101012613,101011548],"class_list":["post-85235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-world-tour-finals-en","tag-great-britain-en","tag-london-en","tag-masters-cup-en","tag-round-robin-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85235","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85235"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85293,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85235\/revisions\/85293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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