Djokovic battles past Simon to reach Monte Carlo pre-quarters

World number two Novak Djokovic kicked off his clay-court season on a winning note as he survived a scare against Gilles Simon of France to reach the pre-quarterfinals of the Monte Carlo Masters here on Tuesday.

After comfortably winning the first set, the Serbian maestro went down in the second before he rebounded strongly to register a 6-3, 3-6, 7-5 win over Simon in an exhilarating second-round clash of the men's singles event that lasted almost two and a half hour on the Court Rainier III.

Djokovic will now lock horns with the winner of Round-32 clash between Spain's Pablo Carreño Busta and Russia's Karen Khachanov.

 

Earlier, Bernard Tomic's slump in form continued at the Monte Carlo Masters as the Australian suffered a 1-6, 6-7 defeat to Argentina's Diego Schwartzman to exit the first major event of the clay season.