Tokyo 2020: Novak Djokovic begins Olympic campaign

Novak Djokovic continued his bid for the Golden Slam as his Olympic campaign got underway, and he moved into the second round of the men’s tennis after a routine 6-2 6-2 win over Bolivia’s Hugo Dellien.

Dellien is currently ranked no. 139 in the world, and his chances of causing a major upset were always highly unlikely.

As it happened, it was a swift demolition by Djokovic, who closed out the match in just one hour and one minute.

The Serbian hit 23 total winners, taking 89% of points on his serve, with the comparative stat for his opponent just 48%. He was largely untroubled by Dellien, who failed to win a single break point throughout the brief runtime, and he hit seven aces on his way to victory.

The world number one will face Germany’s Jan-Lennard Struff in the second round, after he overcame Brazil’s Thiago Monteiro 6-3 6-4.

After the match, Djokovic called out the conditions on court, noting the extreme heat as matches began in the morning.

He said: “I’m still waiting to meet the player that likes this kind of weather. Playing in extreme heat and humidity that is 90 per cent or God knows how much, it’s very challenging.

“Obviously it’s the same for everyone and it’s something we’ve known coming into Tokyo, we expected that the conditions were going to be very tough, but before you come here and experience that you don’t really know how difficult it is.

“Today there was not much of a breeze. I felt like there was trapped hot air that was absorbed by the surface. It was tough, and probably tougher for the earlier matches. I at least had half of the match in shade so I could see the ball better and not feel dizzy on the court.”

Djokovic is fresh off winning Wimbledon, and he has already won this year’s Australian Open and French Open. If he picks up a gold medal at the Olympics, and then wins the US Open later this summer, he will be the first male player to ever achieve the calendar Golden Slam. The only other time the feat was achieved, it was by Steffi Graf in 1988.