Novak Djokovic made it safely into the third round of the Indian Wells ATP Masters on Sunday, but said his straight-sets win over Victor Hanescu left room for improvement. The world number two and second seed, a two-time winner in the California desert, saved all five break points he faced on the way to a 7-6 (7/1), 6-2 victory.
“It was one of those days where you get to serve well and everything else is just kind of trying to find the way to play the right shots at the right time,” said Djokovic, who notched his seventh win over the 87th-ranked Romanian in as many career meetings.
“I didn’t make any returns in the first set. Second set I also struggled with the return, which is one of my better sides in the game generally speaking.”
Djokovic, who won the title here in 2008 and 2011, has played sparingly this season, falling in the quarter-finals of the Australian Open to eventual champion Stanislas Wawrinka and losing in the semi-finals at Dubai to Federer.
He didn’t get a break chance in the opening set, but dominated the tiebreaker and took a quick 3-0 lead in the second. He said he’d be working on a few things before his third-round match against Colombian Alejandro Gonzalez, a 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (7/5) winner over Croatian Ivan Dodig.
Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain bounced fourth-seeded Tomas Berdych 4-6, 6-2, 6-4. Bautista, ranked 53rd in the world, used a punishing ground game to notch his third career win over a top-10 player.
“I played unbelievable,” Bautista said. “I was not serving very well; I had to play my best tennis from the baseline to win the match.”
Berdych, an Australian Open semi-finalist who lifted the trophy in Rotterdam this year, arrived in California off a runner-up finish to Roger Federer in Dubai.
The 28-year-old Czech was at a loss to explain his off-key outing. “Anything I touched today was basically bad and was wrong,” he said. “Definitely my worst match that I had this year.”
