{"id":88673,"date":"2017-05-10T16:35:59","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T14:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/?p=88673"},"modified":"2017-05-10T23:20:49","modified_gmt":"2017-05-10T21:20:49","slug":"novak-moves-past-almagro-to-reach-third-round-in-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-moves-past-almagro-to-reach-third-round-in-madrid\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak moves past Almagro to reach third round in Madrid"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Defending champion Novak Djokovic was forced to produce some of his best tennis on Wednesday to overcome the power of Spanish wild card Nicolas Almagro at the Mutua Madrid Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Novak recorded his 15th match win in 2017, with a 6-1, 4-6, 7-5 triumph in two hours and 15 minutes on the Manolo Santana Centre Court.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The second seed overcame a slow start to take the opening set. He was broken in the first game, but regrouped quickly to capture six games in a row for 6-1 after 26 minutes of play.<\/p>\n

Djokovic missed his break point opportunities in the seventh and ninth games of the second set. Almagro took his chance and broke in the 10th game to level the contest.<\/p>\n

The Spaniard raced to a 3-0 lead in the deciding set, but Novak found another gear and broke twice, in the fifth and 11th games, then served it out to progress into the last 16.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you’re not winning too many matches, you have to build the confidence level, so to win matches like this definitely helps,\u201d<\/strong> said Djokovic. \u201cAlmagro loves playing on clay. He was motivated. He has a lot of strength in his shots, a lot of precision. He can, from both corners, hit equally well. If he doesn’t make many mistakes, he can really beat anyone. But I hung in there and knew that eventually I’m going to get my chances on the second serves. When they were presented, I was ready to use them.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Match statistics<\/u>: aces (7-11), double faults (2-3), winners (26-28), unforced errors (23-37), total points won (97-82).<\/p>\n

Novak, who beat Andy Murray in the 2016 final, goes on to play another Spaniard Feliciano Lopez (H2H 8-1) on Thursday. Lopez beat Gilles Simon 6-3, 3-6, 7-6.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Nole goes on to play Feliciano Lopez (ESP, H2H 8-1) in the last 16 on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":88669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,133,101012203,101012721,113],"class_list":["post-88673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-defending-champion","tag-madrid-en","tag-mutua-madrid-open-2017-en","tag-second-round"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88673","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=88673"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88694,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88673\/revisions\/88694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}