“He’s very entertaining to watch”, said Djokovic, who will play either Swiss third seed Stan Wawrinka or sixth-seeded Japanese Kei Nishikori in Sunday’s final.
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World number one Djokovic, the 2011 and 2015 champion in NY, takes a mighty 19-4 head-to-head lead over the 31-year-old Swiss into the championship match.
Djokovic will start as favourite in the final, holding a 19-4 lead over Wawrinka.
After some gruelling tennis for the past two weeks, the US Open 2016 men’s singles has boiled down to the final day of the competition.
After three of his first five opponents withdrew due to injury, the world No. 1 was rarely stretched in his semi-final win over Gael Monfils. “He just gets much better”, Djokovic stated to Reuters about Wawrinka, who has only four wins against the Serbian in 23 head-to-head match-ups.
“He’s a big match player”.
“There was only two more matches to go, so I felt really close and playing at a good level I think these two weeks”, he said. He doesn’t get, I think, too stressed by the bigger occasion.
“He’s very powerful, powerful player”.
Wawrinka said he would have to play his best tennis to beat Djokovic again. “He can be very risky against anybody”.
Wawrinka in five spectacular sets.
Since that loss in Paris, however, it has virtually been business as usual. Seventeen months later they met in the final of the French Open, when Djokovic was the clear favourite to complete his collection of Grand Slam titles, only for Wawrinka to hit him off the court with a display of all-out aggression.
The 29-year-old Djokovic had treatment on both shoulders during the first semi-final, while Monfils could barely move at times as conditions took their toll. The world number one responded well in dropping sets against Gael Monfils and Jerzy Janowicz but the result was never really in doubt. It looked like a mouth-watering line up on paper and in the humid and scorching temperatures of NY, it proved to be quite a good contest.There were plenty of Japanese supporters in the crowd, much to the delight of Nishikori, and he started the stronger of the two as Stan looked a tad off his game in the first set.
Wawrinka’s problem is that he has spent more than twice as much time on court as Djokovic – 17 hours and 54 minutes to his opponent’s eight hours and 58 minutes – although he insists fitness will not be an issue.
Wawrinka has a big serve, but an even more telling factor in his victories over Djokovic has been the potency of his ground strokes.
Stan Wawrinka says he is raring to go ahead of Sunday’s US Open final following his last-four win over Kei Nishikori.
There was a time, not so long ago, when Wawrinka was considered a huge talent, but he remained in the shadow of Roger Federer, lacking the killer instinct of his famous countryman.
That made him the oldest first-time Slam victor since Goran Ivanisevic at Wimbledon in 2001.
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Back in the 1950s when the US Open was played a few miles away and National League baseball was played in the neighboring boroughs, the Flock that resided at McKeever and Sullivan in Brooklyn used to grunt when No. 6 came up for the St. Louis Cardinals. Pete Sampras was the last player over-30 to win in NY and that was back in 2002.
