Djokovic beats Edmund in second round to improve to 25-0 in 2020

World No. 1 Novak Djokovic kept his perfect season alive at the US Open on Wednesday afternoon, dropping the first set in a tie-break but bouncing back to beat Kyle Edmund, 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4, 6-2.

Djokovic had struggled against Edmund before, losing to him on the clay of Madrid in 2018 and, a few months later, dropping the first set of their next meeting in the third round of Wimbledon, on grass.

And the first set was a struggle this time too—though Djokovic won more points in the set, 44 to 43, he missed out on all three of his break points and ended up finding himself down a set to the Brit.

But the Serb took it to another gear from there, breaking six times over the next three sets to put away a four-set victory. In the last three sets he hit a total of 37 winners to just 23 unforced errors.

"Credit to him for winning the first set. He deserved it," Djokovic said. "I mean, he was hitting the spots with his serve, a high percentage of first serves, forehand, backhand, protecting the line.

"In the second set things started to change a little bit, I started to feel more comfortable, started to read his serve better. I thought I was serving better than I did in the first round. There were some ups and downs throughout the match, but it was over three hours, tough opponent, a tough test.

"I expected it to be a tough, tough task. I'm really glad having an early kind of tough match in the tournament, because it kind of serves me better, I think, for the rest of the tournament."

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Djokovic improved his flawless start to the year to 25-0 with the win and has now won a total of 28 matches in a row, including three Davis Cup wins at the end of 2019. His last loss on the tour came to Roger Federer in his last round-robin match at the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals in November.

Awaiting the No. 1-seeded Djokovic in the third round will be No. 28 seed Jan-Lennard Struff, who won his second-round match against American wild card Michael Mmoh earlier in the day, 6-2, 6-2, 7-5.

Djokovic is 4-0 head-to-head against Struff. They've played each other twice already in 2020, the Serb winning in the first round of the Australian Open in January, 7-6 (5), 6-2, 2-6, 6-1, and in the quarterfinals of the Western & Southern Open here in New York last week, 6-3, 6-1.