World No. 1 Novak Djokovic improved to a 13-match winning streak on Wednesday as he reached the third round of the Shanghai Rolex Masters with an emphatic 6-2, 6-1 victory over Martin Klizan.
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Last week, he surged to a sixth China Open crown in Beijing for the loss of just 18 games in five matches – the lowest five-match total of his career en route to a title.
In 2014, he lost his opening match to Feliciano Lopez, but again there were mitigating factors – Nadal had just been diagnosed with appendix problems that would lead him to close down his season shortly afterwards to undergo surgery.
Nadal, by comparison, is struggling through one of the most challenging years of his career.
The Australian was assessed a code violation and dropped his serve at love, losing the set.
Nadal had beaten the Croat in all four previous matches, but all the best-of-three contests had gone the distance and involved tie-breaks. If it happens, it happens”, shrugged the world number 32, adding: “I probably shouldn’t have done it. But I didn’t think it was too bad. “I showed emotion, but at the same time I played great”.
“That game was so important”, he said after the match.
Tomic said he’s feeling increasingly more confident than he was at the start of the year when his ranking dipped into the 70s. The only negative thing was the first game of the match.
“I felt good”, said Murray, who’s competing for the first time since leading Britain into the Davis Cup final with victory over Australia in Glasgow three weeks ago.
Richard Gasquet battled to a 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 victory over Vasek Pospisil to set a third-round clash with Bernard Tomic.
Djokovic has has lost just one of his last 35 matches here in China, an impressive record considering this stretch always comes towards the end of a long and exhausting season.
When he was down 5-4 in the first and set and Karlovic was serving to win it, Rafa hit 3 incredible winners in a row: “I was expecting a little bit of luck and I fund three shots that were like a miracle”.
It was also notable how much more aggressively Nadal tried to play against Djokovic, a tactic which should serve him well on the faster hard courts of Shanghai.
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Also, fourth-seeded Wawrinka defeated Viktor Troicki of Serbia 7-6 (3), 6-3; fifth-seeded Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic outlasted Jack Sock 7-6 (3), 4-6, 6-4; No. 13-seeded John Isner of the United States defeated Belgium’s David Goffin 6-3, 7-6 (5); and No. 12 Kevin Anderson beat Fabio Fognini 6-3, 7-6 (1).
