[3] Novak Djokovic vs Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard\u00a0<\/p>\n
All eyes will be on Grand Slam king Novak Djokovic<\/a>, who enters the tournament with just one clay-court match (a loss to compatriot Dino Prizmic in Rome) under his belt in 2026. The soon-to-be-39-year-old (birthday May 22) will face one of the hardest servers in the men\u2019s game in Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard<\/a>, a forceful Frenchman who has won nine of his 20 career matches against top-20 opposition.\u00a0<\/p>\n Djokovic has defused the most powerful servers with impressive regularity during his incredible career, but how will he turn up against a home favourite as he seeks his first win since Indian Wells?\u00a0<\/p>\n [WC] Gael Monfils vs Hugo Gaston\u00a0<\/p>\n The man, the myth, the magician. There will not be a dry eye on the grounds when Gael Monfils<\/a> takes the court against compatriot Hugo Gaston<\/a> in a first-time meeting. LaMonf\u2019s 19th and final appearance at his home Slam will be emotional and the 39-year-old\u2019s challenge will be to stay on mission in what is sure to be a chaotic atmosphere. <\/p>\n In the end, he’ll want to give the crowds what they want \u2013 a win \u2013 so they can have the chance to witness the universally adored showman up close and personal in the second round. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[3] Novak Djokovic vs Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard\u00a0 All eyes will be on Grand Slam king Novak Djokovic, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-597308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597308","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=597308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}