Most players dream of winning a match at Wimbledon and hope that if they play at their absolute best, they might have a chance.
Very, very few players are able to win no matter what state they are in and always believe that they have a chance.
Novak Djokovic is one of those players, and despite being well below his best for large parts of his fourth round against Alex de Minaur, he still came through 1-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 to reach his 16th Wimbledon quarter-final.
“I don’t know [what I’m feeling], to be honest,” Djokovic said. “I’m still trying to process the whole match and what happened on the court. It wasn’t a great start from me; it was a great start for him, obviously.
“He broke my serve three times in the first set. It was very windy, very swirly conditions on the court. He was just managing the play better from the back of the court. I didn’t have many solutions but I kind of reset myself in the second. It was a tough game to close out the second set. I think that was maybe a momentum shift where I felt like, OK, I’m back in the game.
“It was a lot of cat and mouse play, a lot of slices. He’s so good at it. He’s one
of the quickest, if not the quickest, players we have on the tour and on the grass
where the ball bounces very low, it’s extremely difficult to play someone like him
if you’re not feeling the ball really well. He exposes all your weaknesses. So I was
just really pleased to hang tough and win this one.”
For the first 30 minutes, no one knew quite what was going on. The man on Centre Court was wearing Djokovic’s clothes and he was using Djokovic’s racket, but who was he? Up in the players’ box, Djokovic’s wife Jelena and their children, Stefan and Tara, were watching intently. But the man whose serve was being broken three times in the opening set could not be the seven-time champion. Surely not.
In the commentary box, John McEnroe claimed that he had not seen the Serbian play such a poor set in years. Nothing was working for him while De Minaur was at the top of his game.
The Australian was playing clever, intelligent points. He was happy to trade blows from the back of the court; he was dragging this Djokovic lookalike into the net and then passing him with ease and delicate touch.
If the rally was long, the lookalike was left gasping for breath; if the rally was short, the lookalike – more often than not – sent the ball wide, long or into the net. And the expression on his face was a cross between perplexed and annoyed. How was De Minaur tracking down so many balls? How was he hitting so many lines? How was this possible?
It did not matter how he was doing it; De Minaur was a set to the good.
The first half of the second set did not help to solve the conundrum. Five breaks of serve came and went – including one game of 18 minutes and 53 seconds, nine deuces and six break points; De Minaur won it – leaving the mystery man with his nose in front at 4-3.
When he sealed the set, some in the crowd rubbed their eyes and looked again. Hang on: that is Novak Djokovic after all. He may be doing deep breathing exercises and icing his stomach at the change of ends (clearly something was not quite right), but that’s Djokovic sure enough.
“It was all good,” Djokovic reassured the crowd. “It was just sometimes trying to manage the breathing. Obviously after 30-plus-shot rallies from the back of the court, you need a breather and you don’t have much time. So that was the case.”
The real Djokovic took the third set (the serve was far more reliable and the groundstrokes had more intent) and then, in fourth set, the man who came back from 4-1 down, the one who managed to find a reserve tank of energy to dominate lung-busting rallies to get back on level terms and then take the match – that was the Djokovic we all know so well.
That Djokovic will be back on Wednesday to face Flavio Cobolli for a place in the semi-finals.
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