\n<\/p>\n
Novak Djokovic delivered a lesson in grand slam tenacity to Learner Tien in the first round of the US Open, battling past the American teenager 6-1, 7-6 (3), 6-2 to launch his latest quest for a record 25th major title.<\/p>\n
Competing in his first singles match since his run to the Wimbledon semi-finals last month, the 38-year-old Serb swapped the whites for a sleek all-black outfit and managed physical issues to prevail under the Arthur Ashe Stadium lights.<\/p>\n
Djokovic, seeded seventh, shrugged off a time violation to consolidate an early break at the start of the contest and a heated debate with the chair umpire shortly afterwards only spurred him on to wrap up the opening set in double quick time.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old Tien, on a near-impossible mission to hand Djokovic his first opening-round loss at a grand slam since the 2006 Australian Open, had his chances to draw level during a draining second set but crumbled in the tiebreak.<\/p>\n
After treatment for a nasty right foot blister, Djokovic produced some heavy groundstrokes from the baseline to break for a 3-1 lead in the third set and the four-times New York champion never looked back from there.<\/p>\n
Tumaini Carayol\u2019s full report to follow<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Novak Djokovic delivered a lesson in grand slam tenacity to Learner Tien in the first round of the US Open, battling past the American teenager 6-1, 7-6 (3), 6-2 to launch his latest quest for a record 25th major title. Competing in his first singles match since his run to the Wimbledon semi-finals last month,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[2293,1972,2896,1853,10666,3866,1262,1259],"class_list":{"0":"post-17633","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-battling","9":"tag-campaign","10":"tag-djokovic","11":"tag-firstround","12":"tag-novak","13":"tag-open","14":"tag-tennis","15":"tag-win"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}