{"id":85903,"date":"2017-01-02T17:26:27","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T16:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/?p=85903"},"modified":"2017-01-06T19:27:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T18:27:39","slug":"novak-gets-doha-defence-off-to-winning-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-gets-doha-defence-off-to-winning-start\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak gets Doha title defence off to winning start"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Trijumf<\/p>\n

Defending champion Novak Djokovic got his Qatar ExxonMobil Open<\/a> campaign off to a winning start on Monday with a topsy-turvy two-set triumph over Jan-Lennard Struff on Centre Court.<\/p>\n

The second seed from Serbia overcame a slow opening to beat no.63 in the ATP Rankings 7-6 (1), 6-3 in one hour and 27 minutes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Novak rallied from 1-5 down in the first set, breaking his German opponent in the eighth and 10th games, and went on to win a tie-breaker in convincing fashion, 7-1. The world no.2 made one more double break in the second set and sealed his first victory in 2017.<\/p>\n

“It wasn’t a great start, I was 1-5 down, it didn’t look very good,”<\/strong> he said. “It took me a little time to start reading his serve and after that it was a good performance.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Djokovic won 85% of his first service points, but struggled with the second serve realization (38%). He went 8\/12 when approaching the net.<\/p>\n

Match statistics: aces (4-9), double faults (4-1), winners (17-23), unforced errors (20-20), total points won (73-56).<\/p>\n

Novak goes on to face world no.71 Horacio Zeballos for a place in the ATP World Tour 250 event quarter-finals. <\/strong>The Argentine beat Florian Mayer (GER) in three sets.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

The defending champion overcame a slow opening to beat German Jan-Lennard Struff 7-6 (1), 6-3 in one hour and 27 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":85939,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012178,133,101011591,310,101011592],"class_list":["post-85903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-250-en-2","tag-defending-champion","tag-doha-en","tag-first-round","tag-qatar-exxonmobil-open-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85903","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=85903"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85958,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85903\/revisions\/85958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}