Yelling at his entourage and muttering to himself, the No. 2-seeded Murray alternated between brilliant and bad for the better part of two sets while dealing with a French opponent and a partisan crowd Wednesday, before righting things to beat No. 9 Richard Gasquet 5-7, 7-6 (3), 6-0, 6-2 and reach his fourth semifinal at Roland Garros.
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Novak Djokovic makes the cover of The National Sport on Friday, June 3, 2016 after the world No 1 advanced to the semi-finals of the French Open in Paris.
While the top-seeded Djokovic made short work of Austria’s 13 seed Dominic Thiem 6-2 6-1 6-4, the second-seeded Murray took down defending champion Stanislas Wawrinka, the No. 4 seed, 6-4 6-2 4-6 6-2 in the last-four stage.
But unrelenting rain that washed out a whole day of play on Monday, for the first time in 16 years, and other wet-weather delays nixed those plans.
“I am extremely proud”.
It is Djokovic’s 30th career major semifinal.
Defending champion Williams is up against the unseeded Bertens on Chatrier, with fourth-seeded Muguruza and No. 24 Stosur next door on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
The Czech expressed his frustration when the players were briefly forced off due to rain at 3-3, telling supervisor Wayne McKewen: “This is an absolute circus”.
“It’s going to be unbelievably tough against Novak”, said Thiem.
But having survived those scares, Murray went into full throttle mode to easily defuse the thunderbolt serves of Ivo Karlovic and John Isner before showing off his full array of tricks to subdue holder Stan Wawrinka in Friday’s semi-final. When the conditions are like they are and so slow, it’s not that easy to finish the point from the back of the court all of the time.
The Serbian said: “It was my best performance of the tournament”.
Murray will play in his 10th slam final looking for his third title and is only the 10th man in the Open era to have reached the final at all four slams.
Williams nearly saw her hopes of winning a record-equalling 22nd Grand Slam title in Paris blasted out of the water in a nervy 5-7, 6-4, 6-1 quarter-final win over lowly-ranked Yulia Putintseva.
Williams showed up for her mandatory post-match press conference about two hours late, which raised alarm bells.
She then served out the set, with a volleyed forehand victor bringing up set point and Stosur then hitting a backhand service return long, for a 6-2 first set in 34 minutes.
Asked whether playing so many days in a row could be a problem for Djokovic, three-time French Open champion Gustavo Kuerten gave a light-hearted response.
“I’m sure it’s going to be a final with a lot of emotions and exchanges from the baseline because we have a similar style of game”, he said.
Not very well at times during his 4-6, 7-6 (7), 6-4, 6-1 win against David Goffin of Belgium.
With Wawrinka’s range increasingly deserting him – he ended the match with 43 unforced errors against the Scot’s 22 – Murray closed out proceedings in the fourth set with two further breaks of serve.
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But her form was at best patchy as she laboured to a 7-6 (9/7), 6-4 semifinal win. Murray knew he was in for a stern test from the third-seeded Wawrinka, and according to BBC Sport, didn’t particularly like his chances against Wawrinka, who is an outstanding clay court player.
