Novak Djokovic makes winning start in Rome, now one victory away from 1,050 career wins

World No. 1 Novak Djokovic dug out of some tricky situations in the first set to defeat Argentina's Tomas Martin Etcheverry, 7-6 (5), 6-2, in his opening match in Rome on Friday evening.

It was his 65th career win in Rome, the most he’s piled up at any of the nine Masters 1000 events, and the 1,049th overall win of his career, now one victory away from his milestone 1,050th.

“I’m still not at the desired level, still finding the shots, finding that groove on the court,” Djokovic said afterwards. “It’s always tricky playing against somebody for the first time, he’s a clay-court specialist and he started better than I did, I started pretty slow. But I kind of found my groove towards the end of the first set.

“The second set was good, especially the last three, four games, so I’m happy with the way I closed out the match.”

Etcheverry, who’s had a breakthrough year—reaching his first two ATP finals in Santiago and Houston—came out swinging, not only breaking serve in the opening game en route to a 3-1 lead, but after losing the break, going up 3-0 and 5-3 in the first set tie-break.

But Djokovic reeled off the last four points of the breaker to clinch the marathon 75-minute set, broke straight away in the opening game of the second set and never really looked back from there.

Djokovic is now 65-10 in his career in Rome, capturing the title six times in 2008, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2020 and 2022. He’s actually never lost before the quarterfinals in 16 previous appearances at the event.

And there’s more—with this latest win, Djokovic improves his career winning percentage on clay to 80.0% (260-65). He’s already 84.6% on hard (670-122) and 85.8% on grass (109-18), making him the only man in the Open Era with 80.0% or better on hard, grass and clay.

Seven other men, all retired, have it on two of the three surfaces—Rod Laver, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer are missing clay, Bjorn Borg is missing hard and Ivan Lendl is missing grass—but Djokovic is the only one to do it on all three.

Awaiting the No. 1-ranked ATP legend in the next round will former No. 3—and current No. 33—Grigor Dimitrov, who defeated fellow former No. 3 Stan Wawrinka earlier in the day, 6-4, 7-6 (3).

Djokovic is 10-1 in his career against Dimitrov, the only loss coming 10 years ago at Madrid in 2013, when Dimitrov won a three-hour, six-minute thriller, 7-6 (6), 6-7 (8), 6-3. That was the pair’s third career meeting—Djokovic has won eight in a row since then.