Everything appeared to be going smoothly once again for Djokovic as he wrapped up his sixth and seventh successive sets at this year’s championships to assert himself against the big-hitting Rinderknech.<\/p>\n
Djokovic had delighted the audience with sumptuous shot-making up to that point, taking a bow and putting a finger to his ear after executing a volley at full stretch on his way to polishing off the opening set.<\/p>\n
That was a clear signal that he had found his rhythm following a start in which the players traded early breaks, but Rinderknech continued to ask questions as he forced an early break point in set two.<\/p>\n
However, when Djokovic responded by immediately turning the pressure on his opponent and clinching a third break point in the following game, the outcome seemed inevitable.<\/p>\n
To his credit, Rinderknech, who ousted third seed Alexander Zverev here last year, stuck to his task – and he was rewarded with successive breaks of serve as he blew Djokovic away in the third set.<\/p>\n
The enthralled crowd became increasingly vocal in support of both players as Rinderknech continued to grow in belief deep into the fourth set.<\/p>\n
With a tie-break required to separate them, the decider remained on serve until the 10th point, when Rinderknech missed a forehand.<\/p>\n
In a fitting conclusion to an absorbing three-hour contest, both players ended the match on the ground after Rinderknech threw himself at a drop shot and Djokovic responded with a dive of his own to clinch his first match point, prompting the crowd to jump to their feet and applaud their efforts.<\/p>\n
“I think I’ve done everything I needed to do today, under circumstances that weren’t maybe as good for me as they were in the second round,” Djokovic added.<\/p>\n
“At this age and stage in my career, every day brings something new and unpredictable for me. <\/p>\n
“I’m hoping that I will come out at my best in a few days’ time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everything appeared to be going smoothly once again for Djokovic as he wrapped up his sixth and seventh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-531524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}