Novak Djokovic defeats Stefanos Tsitsipas to triumph at Astana Open

WATCH: Djokovic lost just one set en route to the title in Astana.

Nine is fine: With a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Stefanos Tsitsipas in Sunday's final at the Astana Open in Kazakhstan, Novak Djokovic ran his autumn winning streak to nine matches.

The Serb needed just 75 minutes to win his fourth trophy of the season, second in the last two weeks, and 90th of his career. He arrived in the Kazakh capital city for this week's ATP 500 event fresh off winning the ATP 250 in Tel Aviv, Israel last week.

Dating back to his Wimbledon triumph in July, Djokovic has in fact won 17 of his last 18 matches; unable to play tournaments in the United States and Canada after his triumph at the All-England Club as a consequence of being unvaccinated for COVID-19, he returned to competition at Laver Cup last month.

“I could not ask for a better restart of the season," Djokovic said after his victory over Tsitsipas. "I’m super-pumped and motivated to end the season as well as I have done these past couple of weeks.

“I’m just very grateful and blessed to be able to play this well at this stage of my life. You know, 35 is not 25. But I think the experience, probably, in these kinds of matches and big occasions helps as well to approach mentally in the right way.”

Djokovic improved his head-to-head record against Tsitsipas to 8-2 with the victory, and has now won the last six matches between the two. The first seven games of the match went with serve before Djokovic recorded the first, and only, en route to claiming the opening set; he later earned the deciding break of the second set at 2-2.

Landing nearly 80 percent of his first serves, Djokovic never faced a break point in the match overall. Tsitsipas won just seven points on return in the match.

As a result of reaching his sixth final of the season, Tsitsipas will return to the Top 5 in the ATP rankings on Monday. The Greek star leads all ATP Tour players with 53 match wins this year.