{"id":88230,"date":"2017-04-18T17:57:40","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T15:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/?p=88230"},"modified":"2017-04-19T16:45:51","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T14:45:51","slug":"novak-battles-past-simon-in-monte-carlo-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-battles-past-simon-in-monte-carlo-opener\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak battles past Simon to reach Monte Carlo last 16"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

No.2 seed Novak Djokovic clinched his 13th match win of the year when he edged past Frenchman Gilles Simon 6-3, 3-6, 7-5 in the second round of the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters<\/a> on Tuesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Simon served for the match at 5-4 in the deciding set, but Novak raised his game and found his way through to the last 16 after two hours and 32 minutes of play on Court Rainier III.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 29-year-old Belgrade native is now 11-1 in their career ATP Head2Head series.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I played a solid tennis for a set and a half,\u201d<\/strong> said Novak. \u201cI felt like I had the control of the match. Then it turned around. I started making some unforced errors. He made less errors and found a way to take away angles from me. I started to take more risk because of his game. I made more errors, unfortunately. Third set was a very close battle that could’ve ended differently, and would have been deserved if he’d won the match. He was two, three points away from winning it. I got myself out of that tricky situation. That’s probably the most positive thing I take from today.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Match statistics<\/u>: aces (2-0), double faults (1-1), winners (23-21), unforced errors (43-26), total points won (93-83).<\/p>\n

Next up for the two-time former champion is no.13 seed from Spain, Pablo Carreno Busta (H2H 1-0).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Djokovic improved to a 29-8 record at the Monte-Carlo Country Club, where he lifted the championship trophy in 2013 and 2015.<\/p>\n

Novak and Viktor Troicki lost to no.1 seeds Henri Kontinen (Finland) and John Peers (Australia) 3-6, 4-6 in the doubles second round.<\/p>\n

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

Next up for the two-time former champion is no.13 seed Pablo Carreno Busta (ESP).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":88226,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101011181,113],"class_list":["post-88230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-monte-carlo-rolex-masters-en","tag-second-round"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88230","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=88230"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88292,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88230\/revisions\/88292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}