Djokovic, playing his first tournament since falling to Carlos Alcaraz in the Australian Open final, had all he could handle from the 27-year-old New Yorker, who peppered the Serb superstar with 16 aces.
Djokovic made an early break stand up to take the first set, but Kovacevic had found his groove and rolled through the second against a clearly frustrated Djokovic.
Djokovic regrouped in the third – finally finding the break he needed in the final game.
“I knew coming into the match that if he serves well and if he picks his spot in the box it’s going to be tough to break him,” Djokovic said.
“I wasn’t maybe feeling my rhythm on that return very well today, but he was just making my life very difficult, returning the serve.
“He was just acing me all over, getting a lot of free points.
“Today was really anybody’s game until the last couple of points. That last game in the third where he missed some first serves, gave me looks on the second and I used it. That’s pretty much it.”
With five Indian Wells titles Djokovic is tied for the record with Swiss great Roger Federer.
But the Serbian superstar hasn’t made it to the quarter-finals in the California desert since his last title run in 2016 and now he’s had to come through a pair of three-setters to return to the last 16.
He’ll face defending champion Jack Draper for a place in the quarter-finals after the Briton beat Argentina’s Francisco Cerundolo 6-1, 7-5.
Draper’s victory here last year – featuring a semi-final win over Carlos Alcaraz – launched his rise to fourth in the world.
But he then missed the better part of six months with an arm injury and arrived in California ranked 14th, his win over Cerundolo marking the first time since June that he’s posted back-to-back ATP victories.
Cerundolo served for the second set at 5-4, but a few mistakes gave Draper an opening and the Briton broke back, saving a pair of break points in the next game before finishing it off on Cerundolo’s serve.
A pair of top-10 seeds were sent packing as Britain’s Cameron Norrie ousted eighth-ranked Australian Alex de Minaur 6-4, 6-4 and Aussie qualifier Rinki Hijikata 10th-ranked Alexander Bublik 6-7 (3/7), 7-6 (7/3), 6-3.
Hijikata, ranked 117th in the world, claimed his first win over a top-10 player to advance to a meeting with Norrie. (AFP)
Edited by Cecil Wong
