{"id":787624,"date":"2026-09-30T17:02:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T17:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/787624\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T17:02:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T17:02:13","slug":"china-open-novak-djokovic-wins-first-match-since-wimbledon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/787624\/","title":{"rendered":"China Open: Novak Djokovic wins first match since Wimbledon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novak Djokovic maintained his remarkable unbeaten record at the China Open as he beat Nuno Borges to secure his first win since reaching the Wimbledon semi-finals in July.<\/p>\n

The 39-year-old former world number one struggled in the second set but came through to win 6-3 7-6 (7-2) for his 30th consecutive victory in Beijing, albeit in his first appearance at the event since 2015.<\/p>\n

Djokovic revealed in August that he has been dealing with an underlying health condition<\/a> that causes particular issues in hot, humid conditions for “the past couple of years” and was far from his best against Portuguese Borges.<\/p>\n

During the second set he used his racquet to help stretch his back between games and needed a medical timeout to receive treatment to his right shoulder.<\/p>\n

But despite that Djokovic battled to victory in one hour and 50 minutes to set up a second-round match against wildcard Bu Yunchaokete of China.<\/p>\n

Playing in the tournament for the first time in 11 years, the Serb, a 24-time Grand Slam champion, is bidding to win the China Open for a record-extending seventh time.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Great Britain’s Katie Boulter is through to the second round in the women’s draw with a straight-set victory over Mai Hontama of Japan.<\/p>\n

Boulter, 30, claimed a 6-3 6-4 win and will now face Czech seventh seed Karolina Muchova in the next round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic maintained his remarkable unbeaten record at the China Open as he beat Nuno Borges to secure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-787624","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\/787624","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=787624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}