The second seed advanced into the ATP world Tour Masters 1000 event quarter-finals following a 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 victory over the Spaniard on Court Rainier III. It was the 30th triumph at the Monte-Carlo Country Club for the 2013 and 2015 titlist.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\nNovak won six straight games from 2-2 in the opening set to a 2-0 lead in the second. He then lost three service games in a row to let Carreno Busta back into the contest. Djokovic broke back once, but the Spaniard took the set to force a decider. Nole led 4-2, but quickly found himself down 15\/40 serving at 4-4. He fended off the two break points and went on to break his rival once again in the last game.<\/p>\n
The Serbian star won 76% of his first service points during the two hours, 26-minute clash.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn both matches here I put myself in a very uncomfortable position. I was leading by a set and a break in the first match, a set and a break today. Everything was working just fine and then I made too many unforced errors. I just completely lost the control with my shots and Pablo started gaining confidence,\u201d<\/strong> Novak said. \u201cThe match could have easily gone his way. I take the positives out of today’s performance. Mentally these kind of wins mean a lot to me.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics<\/u>: aces (2-0), double faults (5-0), winners (38-19), unforced errors (39-22), total points won (104-88).<\/p>\n
Novak will next play no.10 seed from Belgium, David Goffin (5-0 career H2H mark), who scored a 7-6 (4), 4-6, 6-3 win against no.6 seed Dominic Thiem earlier in the day.<\/strong><\/p>\nPhoto: Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nole will next play against no.10 seed David Goffin, who recorded a 7-6, 4-6, 6-3 win over sixth seed Dominic Thiem earlier in the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":88302,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101012700,1039],"class_list":["post-88304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-monte-carlo-rolex-masters-2017-en","tag-third-round"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88304","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=88304"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88341,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88304\/revisions\/88341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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