Novak Djokovic captures Astana Open title

Astana: Former World No 1 Novak Djokovic, played a dominant brand of tennis on Sunday, defeating Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-3, 6-4 to win the third edition of the Astana Open on Sunday.

It was the ninth consecutive match victory for the fourth seed, who triumphed a title just a week ago in Tel Aviv. This was the 90th tour-level victory for the 35-year-old Djokovic and it needed only 75 minutes.

“I dared to dream, actually. I always hoped that I would be going to have a great career. Obviously, didn’t know the number of finals I was going to play, the number of tournaments I was going to win, but my intention was always to reach the highest heights in our sport,” ATP.com quoted Djokovic as saying.

Tsitsipas will return to the Top 5 in the ATP Rankings on Monday and the 24-year-old Greek maintains his lead among all ATP Tour players with 53 match wins.

Djokovic proved to be a maverick to win the first



game at ‘love’ in just over a minute to start the match. At 3-4 and serving, Tsitsipas stepped up the heat on the 21-time major champion.

In the second set’s fifth game, a disappointed Tsitsipas attempted a drop shot that sailed into the net, giving Djokovic another break. Later, Djokovic used his signature backhand winner into an open court to score on his third match point.

“I’m just very grateful and blessed to be able to play this well at this stage of my life. You know, 35 is not 25. But I think the experience, probably, in these kinds of matches and big occasions helps as well to approach mentally in the right way,” said Djokovic.

“Well, it did. I could not ask for a better restart of the season. I’m super-pumped and motivated to end the season as well as I have done these past couple of weeks,” added the 21-times Grand Slam champion.