Whenever the reigning world No.1 in men’s tennis tackles the fellow who has been world No.1 longer than anyone else, it’s a red-letter day in the sport. When it’s a Wimbledon semi-final too, it’s simply monumental.
Jannik Sinner, 57 weeks at the top and counting, versus Novak Djokovic, 428 weeks at the summit before we lost count. How good is this? The young phenomenon who dreams of his first Wimbledon title against the ageless miracle worker who covets an eighth.
Has time really moved on for Djokovic? He hasn’t beaten Sinner in his last four attempts, stretching back to 2023, and accepts he can no longer be favourite against this fabulous Italian machine that is this generation’s answer to the classic Serbian model.
It was instructive to hear Djokovic explaining after his bone-wearying test from another supersonic Italian, Flavio Cobolli, just how draining it is to prepare for every Grand Slam battle at 38.
“Sometimes I get tired of all the chores that I have to do on a daily basis to get my body ready,” he said.
“It’s a lot of hours spent off the court, in the gym, or on the table. I have about 10 people in my team working daily on every single aspect of my on-court, off-court career and preparation and recovery.”
Ah, but it’s still worth it, isn’t it?
Djokovic thanks the youthful Sinner brigade for keeping him young. But, like Grigor Dimitrov – who had Sinner in a world of woe before the Bulgarian’s heart-rending, match-ending injury – Djokovic surely has the capacity to teach those pesky kids a thing or two about grass court tennis.
Sinner knows it. He knows that he’s perhaps lucky to still be in the tournament, and that Djokovic beat him in their two Wimbledon meetings. Facing Nole is like sitting an annual tennis degree paper that’s ever more perplexing.
Which brings us to Taylor Fritz. What about his examination against Carlos Alcaraz? Aaagh! Questions you’ve never seen, questions you can’t quite comprehend, questions with no real answers…
The champion is on a 23-match winning streak, and 19-straight at Wimbledon — and now he’s only gone and found his serve again.
“I don’t want to stop there,” beams the sunny one. “I say that every time once I started to enjoy the match, enjoy the moment, I think my level shows up, my good level shows up.” In other words, the bigger the smile, the better he plays.
Yet Fritz is a cool customer, a Californian with such a big game and such a terrific grass court CV that he sounds as if he believes that, actually, it’s Alcaraz who should be worrying about him.
“I truly know the way that I played the first two sets today (in his quarter-final win over Karen Khachanov) there’s not much any opponent on the other side can do,” declared Fritz, who’s seeking to become the first US men’s singles finalist here since Andy Roddick 16 years ago.
If he were playing Alcaraz on clay, he said, it would be an “absolute nightmare”, but on grass? That’s Fritz’s “equaliser”, his best surface, on which he’s enjoyed half of his 10 tournament triumphs.
It’s a game built around his booming serve, which has delivered him 95 aces so far this Fortnight. If you want to call him a ‘serve bot’, then he’ll take it as a compliment. “Oh, I’m a complete bot,” he beams. “I just want to go out and hold serve.” He generally does: 88 times out of 95 this Wimbledon.
He’s getting better each round too and should have known he was on the right path when, in his first round encounter, Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard sent down the fastest serve ever seen at Wimbledon at 153mph and Fritz still won the point.
Reaching last year’s US Open final infused Fritz with new confidence, and he’ll need all of it because it’s arguable if anyone’s ever been better equipped than Alcaraz to handle what’s going to be thrown at him.
Statistically speaking, the Spaniard is one of the best returners ever on grass. There are, alas, no stats to tell you how many options he has for every shot. Sometimes, it’s as if there are just too many.
We know he has off-days but, my, they’ve been very infrequent of late.
His only loss in the last two-and-a-half months, it appears, came to Andy Murray on the golf course, leaving Carlitos to beam: “It could be really bad for him if I beat him in his home, so I let him win once…”
What a charmer. You can be sure he won’t be offering the same charity on Centre Court.