Djokovic Overcomes Injury Worries & Slow Start To Begin Title Defence in Rome
ATP
Six-time Italian Open winner and defending champion Novak Djokovic started well in Rome this year, beating Tomas Martin Etcheverry to reach the third round.
Djokovic speaks Italian quite fluently, and he surely loves to play tennis in the country. Foro Italico might be one of his favorite courts as he plays amazing tennis in the Italian capital.
The Serbian has won the ATP Masters 1000 event in Italy six times so far, including last year when he beat Stefanos Tsitsipas in the final. This year, he opened against Tomas Martin Etcheverry, who is a really interesting player from Argentina. He has a really solid serve and hits the ball extremely hard, making it rather heavy and very hard to counter on the clay.
That, however, didn't cause any problems for Djokovic, who has sparred on the tennis courts with some of the best and with great success. It wasn’t that simple either because the opening set was settled only after the tie-break.
Djokovic actually opened by losing his serve which is somewhat typical for the Serbian. He’s had a habit of entering matches slowly, but naturally, he usually manages to turn that around.
This time, it happened a few games after he lost his serve, as he made it 3-3. Djokovic had set points up 5-4, but the Argentine held, and after that, the set went into the tie-break.
Etcheverry started better, taking a 3-0 lead, but then Djokovic won three points in a row. Etcheverry took a 5-3 lead, but the Serbian legend finished the tie-break on a four-point run to win it 7-5.
The second set wasn’t that complicated for Djokovic as he knew exactly what to do to win the match, and it showed. Djokovic won the match 7-6(5), 6-2, as he managed to neutralize the aggressive style of Etcheverry.
Djokovic now moved to the next round and showed that despite some injury concerns, he might be able to challenge for the title in Rome once again.
