The Serb rallied from a set down and had to save five match points en route to a 4-6, 7-6 (7), 6-3 semi-final win.<\/strong><\/p>\nNovak started the match strongly and raced to a 4-2 lead but the Madrid native, a former world no.7, clawed his way back with a double break and took the opening set winning four games in a row.<\/p>\n
Verdasco broke the Serb in the first game of the second set, but the no.2 seed stepped up a gear and broke back in the fourth game to level. Nole\u00a0continued to struggle with his game in a tie-break as he found himself 2-6 down. At this point, it seemed improbable that the defending champion would find a way to win, but he managed to come back from the brink. The Belgrade native saved five match points before capturing the second set tie-break 9-7.<\/p>\n
Djokovic\u00a0broke the Spaniard twice in the deciding third set and advanced into his second final in Doha after\u00a0two hours and 22 minutes of play.<\/p>\n
“I can’t describe the second set in one word. I’d like to say tough luck to Fernando, he was clearly the better player for a big part of this match,”<\/strong> said Djokovic. “He had some big forehands; he should have finished it off and he didn’t. The conditions again were not great…we struggled with consistency. It was definitely one of the most exciting matches I’ve played. I don’t think I’ve saved five match points in my life too many times.”<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics<\/u>: aces (3-2), double faults (1-3), winners (14-28), unforced errors (28-56), total points won (101-93).<\/p>\n
Novak\u00a0will face Andy Murray (24-11 H2H) on Saturday at 16:00 CET as he looks to defend his Qatar Open title. <\/strong>The top seed defeated Czech Tomas Berdych 6-3, 6-4.<\/p>\nPhoto: AFP \/ Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak maintained his winning start to 2017 season with a hard-fought 4-6, 7-6 (7), 6-3 victory over Fernando Verdasco on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":86222,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012178,133,101011591,101012622,101011592,34],"class_list":["post-86227","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-qatar","tag-qatar-exxonmobil-open-en","tag-semifinal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86227","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=86227"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86253,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86227\/revisions\/86253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\u010cudesan](\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/doha2017_08.jpg\")
<\/p>\n