Djokovic dominates Cobolli, advances to fourth round in Shanghai

pa href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/novak-djokovic/d643/overview'Novak Djokovic/a passed the latest test in his quest for a 100th tour-level title with flying colours on Tuesday as he overpowered a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/flavio-cobolli/c0e9/overview'Flavio Cobolli/a 6-1, 6-2 to advance to the fourth round at the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/shanghai/5014/overview'Rolex Shanghai Masters/a./p

pIn a contest that thoroughly contrasted his opener against #NextGenATP American a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/alex-michelsen/m0qi/overview'Alex Michelsen/a, Djokovic surged to a dominant win over Cobolli in their maiden Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting./p

pldquo;From the beginning I had a clear game plan of what I needed to do, staying aggressive and trying to use every short ball to take the initiative in the point,rdquo; said Djokovic, who improved to 34-8 on the season. ldquo;Cobolli was evidently exhausted after last nightrsquo;s match [against a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/stan-wawrinka/w367/overview'Stan Wawrinka/a]. I think that has taken a toll, physically, on him today./p

pldquo;I havenrsquo;t played too many matches, I think the positive in that is that Irsquo;m fresh, so I am happy to play every day [for] as long as it takes.rdquo;/p

blockquote class="twitter-tweet"

p lang="en" dir="ltr"Feeling right at home ???? a href="https://twitter.com/DjokerNole?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@DjokerNole/a takes care of Cobolli 6-1 6-2 to return to the Round of 16 in Shanghai.a href="https://twitter.com/SH_RolexMasters?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@SH_RolexMasters/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RolexShanghaiMasters?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#RolexShanghaiMasters/a a href="https://t.co/YnTY7OadqN"pic.twitter.com/YnTY7OadqN/a/p

mdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1843621400969654536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"October 8, 2024/a/blockquote

script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script

pDjokovic will next face a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/roman-safiullin/sx50/overview'Roman Safiullin/a, who battled back from a set and a break deficit to upset 13th seed a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/frances-tiafoe/td51/overview'Frances Tiafoe/a in an absorbing third-round clash. Safiullin struck 51 winners en route to a 5-7, 7-5, 7-6(5) victory, prevailing in three hours and four minutes./p

pRain delays in Shanghai meant that the fans were forced to wait until Tuesday to see the record four-time champion contest his third-round match, but they were treated to a vintage Djokovic performance under the lights./p

[ATP APP]

pDjokovic, who is making his first appearance at the Chinese ATP Masters 1000 since 2019, was dialled in from the get-go, striking cleanly from both wings to control the baseline exchanges and surge into an early lead. He fired 11 winners in a 29-minute first set, according to Infosys ATP Stats./p

pCobolli weathered the oncoming storm at the beginning of the second set to hold serve twice, but Djokovic kept his foot on the gas to dismantle the Italianrsquo;s serve in the fifth game./p

pFrom there, Djokovic cruised to victory to boost his hopes of qualifying for the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/nitto-atp-finals/605/overview'Nitto ATP Finals/a in Turin. The Serb is currently eighth in the PIF ATP Live Race To Turin, 220 points behind a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/andrey-rublev/re44/overview'Andrey Rublev/a in seventh./p

pnbsp;/p

[NEWSLETTER FORM]