{"id":89018,"date":"2017-05-20T21:31:46","date_gmt":"2017-05-20T19:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/?p=89018"},"modified":"2017-05-21T15:51:41","modified_gmt":"2017-05-21T13:51:41","slug":"novak-zverev-to-play-for-title-in-rome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-zverev-to-play-for-title-in-rome\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak, Zverev to play for title in Rome!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Novak is through to his eighth Rome Masters final!<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old Serbian ace remained undefeated 5-0 against the next-generation star Dominic Thiem in their ATP H2H series, as he hammered the young Austrian 6-1, 6-0 in just 59 minutes on Saturday evening.<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the win, Novak improved to 8-0 in last-four matches in the Italian capital.<\/p>\n

The second seed produced a brilliant performance to advance to his first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 final in 2017. He raced to a one-set lead against the 23-year-old Thiem in 26 minutes, breaking him twice, in the second and fourth games.<\/p>\n

Djokovic continued to pressure his rival in the second set. The world no.2 used the momentum to break the Mutua Madrid Open runner-up three more times and claimed an emphatic victory, his 20th match win of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is undoubtedly my best performance of this year and maybe even longer. I’m overjoyed and happy with every minute that I spent on the court today. It was a perfect match. Everything that I intended to do, I have done it and even more,\u201d<\/strong> said Djokovic. \u201cThere’s not much to say except that I am so grateful to experience something like this, because I have been waiting and working for it for a long time.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Match statistics<\/u>: aces (2-0), double faults (0-1), winners (14-8), unforced errors (6-17), total points won (55-25).<\/p>\n

Novak will face no.16 seed Alexander Zverev in the Internazionali BNL d’Italia<\/a> final on Sunday at 16:00 CET. It will be their first career encounter.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Djokovic will look to win his 31st Masters 1000 title, while the German is competing in his first Masters final.<\/p>\n

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

Djokovic produced his best tennis to beat no.8 seed Dominic Thiem 6-1, 6-0 in just 59 minutes on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":89016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101012724,101012240,101010433],"class_list":["post-89018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-internazionali-bnl-ditalia-2017-en","tag-rome-en","tag-semifinal-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89018","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=89018"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89081,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89018\/revisions\/89081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}