Novak Djokovic cruises into third round at French Open
Novak Djokovic may not be firing on all cylinders but the former world No.1 is safely through to the third round of the French Open.
The Serbian, seeded only 20 due to his recent injury absence, will face Spanish 13th seed Roberto Bautista Agut after a straight-sets win over Jaume Munar.
Munar may be ranked a lowly 155 in the world but he made Djokovic work for every point in some lengthy and at times spectacular rallies.
The Spaniard, broken early on, broke back in the opening set only for Djokovic to race through the tiebreak.
Munar occasionally had Djokovic scrambling throughout the next two sets with his fearsome shot-making, but the 2016 champion was able to post a 7-6 (7-1) 6-4 6-4 victory.
“I went through my ups and downs and I’m not really satisfied with the performance. I just played enough in the right moments to win the match,” Djokovic said.
“I have good days of serving when everything flows. But the issue is that I had to (change) the service motion a lot because of the injury (and) I changed the racquet.
“I’ve already had three different service motions this year. So it’s something that I’m working on. At times today, I didn’t feel rhythm at all of the serve. So I was missing a lot of first serves.”
While it was obvious his game is still a long way from the form he produced to win four slams in a row from 2015 to 2016, Djokovic was quick to put his struggles into perspective.
“To sit here and talk about how tough it is and you have people starving to death, for me there is no point in talking about that. It’s just the way it is.”
Meanwhile, Marco Trungelliti’s epic French Open journey came to an end in the second round.
The Argentinian became the unlikely darling of Roland Garros after driving for 10 hours from Barcelona to Paris, with his brother, mother and gran, on Sunday in order to register in time as a lucky loser.
Trungelliti, the world No.190, then stunned the tennis world by beating Australia’s former top-20 player Bernard Tomic to net himself a $90,000 cheque.
However, the 28-year-old hit the skids in round two as he was beaten 6-1 7-6 (7-1) 6-1 by Italian Marco Cecchinato.
In a match held over from Tuesday, Tomas Berdych, the 17th seed, was a first-round casualty after he was beaten by France’s Jeremy Chardy 7-6 (7-5) 7-6 (10-8) 1-6 5-7 6-2.
Fourth seed Grigor Dimitrov secured a decisive break in the 17th game of the final set to beat American Jared Donaldson 6-7 (7-2) 6-4 4-6 6-4 10-8 in the second round.
It was the Bulgarian’s 50th grand-slam match win as he matched his best Roland Garros performance by reaching the third round for the third time where he play Spaniard Fernando Verdasco.
Kei Nishikori, the 19th seed, rallied past local favourite Benoit Paire 6-3 2-6 4-6 6-2 6-3 to reach the third round for the fourth consecutive year.
-AAP