{"id":263697,"date":"2025-11-05T06:25:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T06:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/263697\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T06:25:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T06:25:14","slug":"djokovics-reverses-course-on-tabilo-wins-in-athens-debut-tennis-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/263697\/","title":{"rendered":"Djokovics Reverses Course on Tabilo, Wins in Athens Debut \u2013 Tennis Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tennisexpress.com\/pages\/tennis-player\/novak-djokovic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Novak Djokovic<\/a> has lent his starpower to the inaugural Vanda Pharmaceutical Hellenic Championship, and he will continue to do so for a few more days at the very least.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tennisexpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\" noreferrer noopener nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" data-lazyloaded=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"610\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Pro-Player-Gear-610X150-03.jpg\" alt=\"tennis express pro player gear\" class=\"wp-image-54451\" style=\"width:840px;height:auto\"  data-\/><\/a>tennis express pro player gear<\/p>\n<p>Playing professionally in Greece for the first time, the top seed took out Alejandro Tabilo for the first time on Tuesday, surging past the left-handed Chilean 7-6(3), 6-1 in one hour and 39 minutes to book his spot in his 225th ATP quarterfinal. He has reached that enormous amount of quarterfinals across 25 different countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt feels like home, playing in Athens,\u201d said Djokovic, who recently moved to Athens with his family. \u201cI always loved Greece\u2026 Athens is in my heart, no question about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The 38-year-old had lost his previous two encounters with Tabilo, at Rome in 2024 and this year in Monte-Carlo, but he made use of the fast-playing hard courts and powered up his serve to make life easier against the 28-year-old former world No.19.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic failed to convert on two break points in the opening game of the match, but he didn\u2019t face a break point in the set and he dominated the tiebreak to take the one set to love lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic won 34 of 37 first-serve points in the contest, cracked 13 aces and saved the only break point he faced.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic hit 27 winners against just 12 for Tabilo.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" data-lazyloaded=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"872\" height=\"602\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/image-3.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-58045\"  data-\/><\/p>\n<p>With the crowd chanting \u201cNole! Nole!\u201d, the 24-time major champion ripped through the second set, reeling off the final five games to book his 1160th career win against 223 losses.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He will face either sixth-seeded Nuno Borges or Eliot Spizzirri in the quarterfinals.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m just really thrilled to get through tonight against Tabilo, a player who I had never won against. I was more under tension, and stressed before the match than I would be in some other matches.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic has lent his starpower to the inaugural Vanda Pharmaceutical Hellenic Championship, and he will continue to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-263697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}