{"id":5243,"date":"2013-01-07T08:32:32","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T00:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/?p=5243"},"modified":"2013-01-07T08:32:32","modified_gmt":"2013-01-07T00:32:32","slug":"spain-beats-serbia-in-hopman-cup-epic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2013\/01\/07\/spain-beats-serbia-in-hopman-cup-epic","title":{"rendered":"Spain beats Serbia in Hopman Cup epic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2013\/01\/07\/spain-beats-serbia-in-hopman-cup-epic\/attachment\/spain-hopman-cup-460x306\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5244\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-5244\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2013\/01\/Spain-Hopman-Cup-460x306-410x272.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"410\" height=\"272\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Serbia\u2019s bid for a maiden Hopman Cup title will have to wait at least another year after Spain upset the top seeds 2-1 in the final which finished in the early hours of Sunday morning at Perth Arena.<\/p>\n<p>World No.1 Novak Djokovic gave Serbia a 1-0 lead when he beat Fernando Verdasco 6-3 7-5 in the $1 million mixed-teams event.<\/p>\n<p>But the tie was sent to a live mixed doubles when Anabel Medina Garrigues upset former world No.1 Ana Ivanovic 6-4 6-7(3) 6-2 in two hours and 38 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Spain prevailed just after midnight in the mixed doubles 6-4 7-5 to secure their fourth Hopman Cup title.<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic and Ivanovic have now paired together three times in Perth, but are yet to walk away with the diamond-encrusted balls that goes to the winning team.<\/p>\n<p>They came close to taking out the title two years ago, but were forced to pull out of the final after Ivanovic succumbed to a stomach injury.<\/p>\n<p>World No.13 Ivanovic was a hot favourite to beat world No.50 Medina Garrigues.<\/p>\n<p>But the 2008 French Open champion looked off her game, committing a glut of unforced errors to hand the ascendancy to Medina Garrigues.<\/p>\n<p>Ivanovic snared an early break in the second set, but she called for the trainer at 2-0 up after feeling ill.<\/p>\n<p>Medina Garrigues broke back late in the set to send it to a tiebreak, but Ivanovic produced the goods to level the match at one set apiece.<\/p>\n<p>However, Ivanovic\u2019s growing tally of unforced errors came back to haunt her, with the glamorous Serbian committing 46 all up to Medina Garrigues\u2019 16<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, in the men\u2019s singles rubber, Verdasco unleashed 21 winners to 15, but his 34 unforced errors proved to be his undoing, with Djokovic committing just 13 in comparison.<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic broke world No.24 Verdasco in the fourth game of the match to propel him to first-set honours.<\/p>\n<p>Verdasco unleashed an array of blistering ground strokes to race out to a 3-0 lead early in the third set.<\/p>\n<p>But Djokovic hit back, breaking Verdasco in the fifth and 11th games to secure the match in 92 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to player against a player like him. He\u2019s very aggressive and serves over 200kmh,\u201d Djokovic said of his win over Verdasco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Serbia\u2019s bid for a maiden Hopman Cup title will have to wait at least another year after Spain upset the top seeds 2-1 in the final which finished in the early hours of Sunday morning at Perth Arena. World No.1 Novak Djokovic gave Serbia a 1-0 lead when he beat Fernando Verdasco 6-3 7-5 in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5894,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5894"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}