Djokovic said he had shown “many guts” to return from a whole in wet conditions to beat the inspired qualification Yannik Hanfmann and reach the fourth round.
The 38-year-old Serb looked slow in the first set but recovered to win 4-6 7-5 6-3 in two hours and 42 minutes.
Djokovic will face the Spanish head without seeded Jaume Munar in the last 16.
“The crowd launched me, and towards the end of the second set, I started to enter more,” said the world number five, which relied on the noisy local support throughout the match,
“I often had to fight in matches that I was perhaps not the best player – fighting is something that I know quite throughout my career, but I stayed there and I showed a lot of guts.”
Hanfmann is ranked 150th in the world and qualified to set up what would only have been the second victory of his career against a player in the top five of the world.
The 33 -year -old man took the first set with an ace after claiming 17 winners from Djokovic at 10, the winner of the Grand Slam on 24 times who did not have a single break.
Djokovic seemed to fight with heat and humidity, throwing water on his head after held 3-2 in the second set.
“It’s brutal when you have more than 80% humidity day after day – especially for guys when they play during the day with heat, with the sun, it’s even brighter,” added Djokovic, whose match finished after 9 pm, the local time.
“For me, biologically, it’s a little more difficult to face it, but I had to resist the storm today. Yannick has played an incredible match from the start.”
Djokovic slowly increased his levels and finally forced his first points of breakdown of the match with Hanfmann used to stay in the second set at 6-5.
The spectators increased the levels of decibels while Djokovic broke a winner to take the set and level the match, then underlined his ear to celebrate support.
Hanfmann’s precision decreased overall decisive and after having pulled a forehand to give Djokovic a break at 3-1, the Serb served the whole to succeed.
