{"id":2562,"date":"2014-06-06T22:51:29","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T15:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/?p=2562"},"modified":"2014-06-06T22:51:29","modified_gmt":"2014-06-06T15:51:29","slug":"djokovic-return-to-french-open-final-by-defeating-gulbis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/tennis\/djokovic-return-to-french-open-final-by-defeating-gulbis\/","title":{"rendered":"Djokovic return to French Open final by defeating Gulbis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Paris &#8212; Novak Djokovic worked his way back into the French Open final, taking care of Ernests Gulbis and his big serve 6-3, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 Friday on the first sunny day of this year&#8217;s tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The second-seeded Serb was able to control the pace of the match on Court Philippe Chatrier while letting Gulbis&#8217; unforced errors mount. The powerful Latvian, who was playing in his first Grand Slam semifinal, finished with 44 errors.<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic is a six-time major champion who needs to win the title at the French Open to complete a career Grand Slam. He also reached the final at Roland Garros in 2012, but lost to eight-time champion Rafael Nadal.<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic will next face either Nadal or Andy Murray in Sunday&#8217;s final. They were up next on Chatrier.<\/p>\n<p>Djokovic was first to get into trouble in the first semifinal, but he managed to save two break points and hold to 2-2 in the opening set&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Source\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com\/pro-game\/2014\/06\/djokovic-defeats-gulbis-return-french-open-final\/51683\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n<p>South Africa Today Sport \u2013 Sport News <a title=\"Tennis\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/category\/tennis\/\">Tennis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paris &#8212; Novak Djokovic worked his way back into the French Open final, taking care of Ernests Gulbis and his big serve 6-3, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 Friday on the first sunny day of this year&#8217;s tournament. The second-seeded Serb was able to control the pace of the match on Court Philippe Chatrier while letting Gulbis&#8217; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[248],"tags":[539,475,251,249,603,30,473,183,261,120,188,1272,337],"class_list":["post-2562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-2014-french-open","tag-court-philippe-chatrier","tag-ernests-gulbis","tag-french-open","tag-french-open-final","tag-news","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-paris","tag-roland-garros","tag-south-africa-today-sport","tag-sport-news","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}