Djokovic reached his 225th tour-level quarter-final by claiming his first victory over Alejandro Tabilo in Athens.<\/p>\n
Following his win, tournament organisers played a tribute video to his former coach Nikola Pilic, who died in September aged 86.<\/p>\n
An emotional Djokovic said: “Considering what he meant to me and my family – privately, also professionally – he was my tennis father, someone who has played a fundamental, integral role in my development as a tennis player and as a human being.<\/p>\n
“It was really sad news when I heard that he passed away.<\/p>\n
“As long as I play tennis and as long as I live, I’ll celebrate his name.”<\/p>\n
Chile’s Tabilo had won both previous meetings with Djokovic, but Roger Federer remains the only player to record a 3-0 head-to-head start against the record 24-time men’s Grand Slam champion.<\/p>\n
But after prevailing in a first-set tie-break, the 38-year-old Serb extended his record of winning every match in which he has won the first set this season to 28 as he cruised to a 7-6 (7-3) 6-1 win.<\/p>\n
Djokovic won 20 of the final 23 points in a dominant finish to the match.<\/p>\n
Chasing the 101st singles title of his career in the Greek capital, Djokovic will next play Nuno Borges on Thursday after the Portuguese sixth seed pulled off a comeback 5-7 6-3 6-4 win over American Eliot Spizzirri.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Djokovic reached his 225th tour-level quarter-final by claiming his first victory over Alejandro Tabilo in Athens. Following his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-245185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}