{"id":98967,"date":"2018-04-16T16:30:58","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/?p=98967"},"modified":"2018-04-16T21:35:33","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T19:35:33","slug":"novak-eases-into-second-round-faces-coric-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/news\/tennis\/novak-eases-into-second-round-faces-coric-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Novak eases into second round, faces Coric next"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Two-time former champion Novak Djokovic took only 56 minutes to seal his place in the second round of the <a href=\"http:\/\/montecarlotennismasters.com\/?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters<\/a> after defeating fellow Serbian Dusan Lajovic 6-0, 6-1 on Monday.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The ninth seed delighted the Court Rainier III crowd with his near-perfect performance. Novak won 82% of points on his first serve and 67% of return points. He was 8\/8 on net approaches, and saved all four break points he faced.<\/p>\n<p>The Serbian star broke Lajovic three times in the first set\u00a0wrapping it up in just 22 minutes. Dusan won his first game in the match to level at 1-1 in the second set, before Nole broke him twice more en-route to his 31st win at the Monte Carlo Country Club.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cI thought it was good considering the amount of matches I&#8217;ve played in the past almost 12 months,\u201d <\/strong>Djokovic said.<strong> \u201cWith injury and everything that was happening the past couple months, the post-surgery period, me trying to come back to Indian Wells and Miami, and obviously playing well below the desired level, it wasn&#8217;t that easy for me to cope with all of that. At the same time it made me I think even more inspired to come back and try to play the way I played today. Under the circumstances and considering I haven&#8217;t played too many official matches, I thought I played well. It&#8217;s my first match on clay. All in all, it was a great start of the tournament.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Match statistics: aces (1-0), double faults (2-1), winners (19-4), unforced errors (16-19), total points won (56-25).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Novak will next play against ATP #39 Borna Coric, whom he beat in their only previous meeting on Madrid clay two years ago. <\/strong>The talented Croat eliminated Frenchman Julien Benneteau in straight sets, 6-2, 6-3.<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Djokovic is playing in Monte-Carlo for the 12th time, capturing titles in 2013 and 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Novak took only 56 minutes to seal his place in the second round of the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters after defeating fellow Serbian Dusan Lajovic 6-0, 6-1 in the opener. He will face world no.39 Borna Coric of Croatia on Wednesday (1-0 H2H)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":98962,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,310,101011267,101012329,101011181],"class_list":["post-98967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-first-round","tag-masters-1000-en","tag-monte-carlo-en","tag-monte-carlo-rolex-masters-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98967","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=98967"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99097,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98967\/revisions\/99097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}