Novak Djokovic begins Shanghai Masters defence with easy win

World number one Novak Djokovic continued his winning momentum as he eased past Denis Shapovalov of Canada in straight sets to kick off his title defence at the Rolex Shanghai Masters on a promising note on Wednesday. 

The Serbian tennis maestro took one hour and 10 minutes to register a comfortable 6-3, 6-3 win over Shapovalov in the one-sided opening clash of the ATP Masters 1000 event.

Ecstatic to make a return to Shanghai, Djokovic asserted that he served really well throughout the match and was quite solid from back of the court.

The top-seeded player was also full of praise for Shapovalov following the win. 

“It's nice to be back. And also, it feels very good to play as well as I did today.I knew that Denis is very dangerous player. If he has time, if he's feeling the ball well, it can be a tough match," the Association for Tennis Professionals (ATP) quoted Djokovic as saying. 

“He was serving really well, high percentage also first serves, and just really difficult to return in the first set, so it took me a little bit of time to really adjust, start reading his serve a little bit better. But I thought I served really well. I used angles. I was very solid from back of the court," he added. 

With the win, Djokovic has also improved his head-to-head rivalry against 20-year-old left-hander to 3-0. 

Djokovic will now square off with 16th seed John Isner for a place in the quarter-finals of the tournament.