Novak Djokovic soothes to a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Hubert Hurkacz on Friday as he steps up to the semi-finals of the Madrid Open where he faces a solid Spanish test.<\/p>\n

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Djokovic, a three-time champion in Madrid, had little difficulty on the outdoor clay versus Hurkacz, whose poor hitting concluded any thoughts of a quarterfinal upset.<\/p>\n

Rafael Nadal played Carlos Alcaraz later Friday on center court at the \u2018Caja M\u00e1gica\u2019 with fans eager to see two generations of Spanish tennis clash.<\/p>\n

Nadal, who at 35 has triumphed a record 21 Grand Slam titles, will meet Alcaraz, 19, acclaimed by many in Spain as his possible heir.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Nadal, who has triumphed their previous two games, stated Alcaraz was favourite to win as he is in better shape.<\/p>\n

Nadal is coming back from a six-week injury dismissal and revealed that he could not prepare properly for the tourney, with his focus on the French Open later this month.<\/p>\n

Nadal had to save 4 match points in his three-set victory over David Goffin in the third round.<\/p>\n

Speaking in Spanish, Djokovic stated he will be watching Nadal play against Alcaraz.<\/p>\n

\u201c(I will be) more relaxed because I won today, but one thing is sure: tomorrow I will face a Spanish rival,\u201d Djokovic stated.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Novak Djokovic soothes to a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Hubert Hurkacz on Friday as he steps up to the semi-finals of the Madrid Open where he faces a solid Spanish test. Djokovic, a three-time champion in Madrid, had little difficulty on the outdoor clay versus Hurkacz, whose poor hitting concluded any thoughts of a quarterfinal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,41],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5781"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5785,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5781\/revisions\/5785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}