The Serbian had to work on two saves to overcome the American Alex Michelsen.
Serbia’s Novak Djokovic defeated American Alex Michelsen in two sets to win in the tie round (7-6 (7/3), 7-6 (11/9)) to get into the running at the Masters 1000 in Shanghai on Saturday. . Winner of the only Olympic tournament this year, certainly a symbolic but meager harvest for this ogre, Djokovic’s objective in Shanghai is to win a 100th tournament.
In the duel of the generations against the young 20-year-old American Alex Michelsen, advancing overall to 43rd place, Djokovic was in trouble even if he came out in two sets. After trailing 3-0, the 37-year-old Serbian rallied and gradually took the lead in the first set to win it in the tie-breaker. In the second set, he took Michelsen’s serve to lead 3-1, but was broken, the American returning to 4-3. Here again, the Serbian had to wait for the tie break.
He gave the crowd the point of the game when he went for a corner after a shot down, and he went a backhand pass with his back to the net. He saved two set points before sealing his third match point with a service winner. In the end, the unforced errors and the lapses of concentration were of no consequence, except for one game that extended to 1h55. “Djoko” will face Italy’s Flavio Cobolli or Switzerland’s Stan Wawrinka in the next round. In his part of the table, Russian Andrey Rublev (seed N.6) was eliminated by Czech Jakub Mensik (65th) 6-7 (7/9), 6-4, 6-3.