Novak Djokovic faced an early test on Sunday, dropping his first set in French Open play to unseeded Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard.<\/p>\n
But he rallied for a tough second-set victory, then largely cruised from there to a 5-7, 7-5, 6-1, 6-4 win in the first round at Roland-Garros.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Mpetshi Perricard appeared to run out of steam after the lengthy first two sets. A Grand Slam-tested Djokovic blitzed through the third, then broke Mpetshi Perricard to open the fourth.<\/p>\n
Mpetshi Perricard battled back to break Djokovic\u2019s first serve of the fourth to keep the final set competitive. But Djokovic ultimately prevailed and had enough energy to do a little dance after securing the victory with a forehand winner.<\/p>\n
The two shared an embrace at the net, and Mpetshi Perricard received an ovation from the appreciative Roland Garros crowd as he walked off the court in defeat.<\/p>\n
Djokovic secured the win in his 82nd career start at a Grand Slam tournament, breaking a tie with Roger Federer and Feliciano L\u00f3pez for the most all time by a men\u2019s player. Djokovic has now advanced out of the first round in each of his 22 French Open starts.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
The third-seeded Serbian is seeking his fourth career French Open title and his first since 2023. Djokovic will take on another Frenchman, Valentin Royer, in the second round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak Djokovic faced an early test on Sunday, dropping his first set in French Open play to unseeded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[4039,109700,433,99,428],"class_list":["post-663070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-french-open","tag-giovanni-mpetshi-perricard","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}