Second seed Federer will face either Andy Murray or Vasek Pospisil in the last four at SW19.
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Throughout the opener, Gasquet unleashed his lawn-hugging slice backhand to draw several of Wawrinka’s 14 errors as the Roland Garros champion repeatedly tried cranking flat drives off that slice.
Gasquest, who reached the Wimbledon semifinals in 2007, will next face top-seeded Novak Djokovic on Friday. Pospisil’s win over Troicki was his third five-set win in four rounds at the All England Club this year. “He won the doubles previous year and he can play well on the surface”.
Gasquet, a highly skilled volleyer who does not always employ that element of his game, won 13 of 19 net trips in the fifth set. “I don’t know why they do it at a time like that”, Pospisil said.
“He’s won over a thousand matches and played over 1,200 matches”.
Pospisil had hoped to join Robert Powell (1908 Wimbledon) and Milos Raonic (2014 Wimbledon) as the only Canadian men to make a Grand Slam final four. Pospisil also managed to turn the crowd in his favour after the umpire called him for not one, but two time violations. The second-seeded Swiss served 11 aces, broke five times, had 36 winners and thoroughly dominated a player he has now beaten six straight times. “You never know how you’re going to come back from them, but I think I used them to my advantage”.
“We both like to look back at that summer – me, not so much at the Olympics; him, probably not so much at Wimbledon”, Federer said.
“I didn’t feel like the breaks affected me too much”, Murray said. If he had waited one second longer, I would have served.
Before last night, Gasquet had lost 15 of his 16 most recent clashes against top-10 players.
“I really wanted to win; it’s a quarter-final and a big match against Stan”, said Gasquet. That made the difference because I was able to fight. The final four lineup has an unexpected name, too.
Andy is not the only Murray in the semifinals at Wimbledon this year – so is his older brother, Jamie, in men’s doubles.
Friday’s other semifinal will pit seven-time champion Roger Federer against 2013 victor Andy Murray. Federer is 9-0 at that stage in southwest London. Bizarrely, it was closing just as the sun began to steadily spread over the All England Club and conditions did not dip throughout the afternoon.
In Federer’s victory against the No. 12 seed Simon, a run of 116 successive service holds, which started back to his first round victory against Philipp Kohlschreiber in a lead-up tournament in Halle, came to an end when he failed to serve out the set at 5-4 in the second.
A feat that had been beyond the skill-set of Ernests Gulbis, Florian Mayer, Ivo Karlovic, Andreas Seppi, Damir Dzumhur, Sam Querrey, Sam Groth and Roberto Bautista Agut, was pulled off by Simon in the second set of their quarter-final on Wednesday.
If Murray reaches the final and rain descends, this performance could prove pivotal.
“He was leading me two-sets-to-one, then I tried to tell myself to fight better”.
Both advanced in quarterfinals slowed only by a pair of rain delays.
By then Pospisil was taking his time between points on his own serve, recuperating from the long, draining rallies he was coerced into playing. The Scot has been in good form and although Pospisil does possess a good serve, Murray will be well prepared having dealt with Ivo Karlovic’s delivery on Monday, while the Canadian does struggle to get a high first-serve percentage at times.
Federer still leads Wednesday’s quarterfinal match 6-3, 5-5.
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Among the spectators at Centre Court were the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Albert II of Monaco, the Countess of Wessex and Prince Michael of Kent.
