Serbian fourth seed Novak Djokovic offered little resistance to Flavio Cobolli when he thrashed him in straight sets at 6-1, 6-2 during the third round held on Tuesday of Shanghai Masters 1000 event.
This was the first time Djokovic was playing at the ATP since US Open before Shanghai and he conquered everything he aimed at against the 22-year-old Cobolli who had nothing he can do about it.
In the next round Djokovic is to meet Roman Safiulin, who outclassed Francois Tiafoe in the 5-7, 7-5, 7-6 (7/5).
The first set saw the 37-year old Serb dominate the Italian and get two breaks of serve at the very beginning and look very strong and dominant at 4-1.
In the second set, Djokovic broke to lead 3-2 and from then on there was absolutely nothing to.
Cobolli looked very weak on his racquet, and was able to generate only six winners during the whole match, which of course was far too little to stand a remote chance against Djokovic.
Earlier in the day, Stefanos Tsitsipas will be facing Daniil Medvedev once again after coming through his match against Alexander Muller 6-3, 7-5.
Tsitsipas and the Russian, a former US Open winner, will cross swords for the 14th time and the first since October last year.
Medvedev leads Tsitsipas 9-4 in head-to-heads and the two players had quite a heated rivalry off the court in the past years.
“I respect him on the tour, much more than before. We’ve had a few spats on the court before, but I think time has sorted things out.” Tsitsipas said.
Tsitsipas had to sit out for two days because of rain to face Muller in the third round. He had the look of a man in complete command of the match until he was finally broken to 5-3 in the second set.
Undeterred, the Greek launched his counterattack to break back to level the set and then set up the match against Medvedev.
In other match, American Ben Shelton defeated Roberto Carballes Baena 6-3, 6-4, to hit eight aces and 24 winners. He will play fourth round match against world number one Jannik Sinner.
