The award-winning writer has covered Chicago sports for most of her 32-year career, including at the Chicago Tribune, before joining ESPN in 2009, and has also covered tennis since 1986.
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The first man since Jim Courier in 1992 to win the first two majors of the season, Djokovic was a short-priced favourite to win a third successive Wimbledon crown.
Trying to win a gold medal in Rio is a major target for Djokovic, who finished fourth in 2012 after losing to Andy Murray in the semi-finals and then Juan Martin Del Potro in the bronze medal match.
It all worked out well in the end, though, as 28th seed Querrey won 7-6 (6) 6-1 3-6 7-6 (5) to become the first player to beat Djokovic in grand slam play since Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka in the 2014 French Open final. “He just overpowered me”.
Djokovic was hoping to win his “Calendar Slam” this year and get nearer to Federer’s all-time Grand Slam record of 17 majors win. “Maybe he felt winning all four titles and being the defending champion of all four was a Grand Slam in his mind”.
“I think there are only two people that you can say that about out of all the athletes”.
Most pundits had tipped a third slam final of 2016 between the Serbian and Murray, who was runner-up to Djokovic at the Australian and French Open.
Late in Djokovic’s second-round victory Wednesday, he slipped and fell to his back, but he appeared to be OK at the time.
Laver also won the Grand Slam in 1962 and was only the second man to achieve the feat after American Don Budge in 1938.
“That was sort of quite a surprise, seeing Novak getting knocked out”. I know what to do. “He played a terrific match”.
After the American made headlines by beating No. 1-ranked Novak Djokovic on Saturday at Wimbledon, Querrey also furthered the cause of July 4th national pride by being the first US male player to advance to the Wimbledon quarters since 2011.
“If I didn’t win, there would have been a lot of, ‘Wow, it was kind of a fluky match against Novak, because you didn’t back it up, ‘” Querrey said.
“You knew he was mentally tough and that he was going to come back”.
Djokovic did. Sort of. Although Djokovic won the third set, Querrey made him pay for the 31 unforced errors and won the fourth, clinching a memorable win. But after the fourth game, just 20 minutes into the set, the rain came again and suspended play. “But I’m going to move on from this hopefully as a stronger player”.
With Novak Djokovic out of the tournament, Federer’s chances of becoming the first man to win an eighth Wimbledon title is increasing steadily, according to Ladbrokes.
His reward is a last-16 clash with 34-year-old Frenchman Nicolas Mahut. There’s a popular Vine on social media of Querrey – sunglasses and hat on, shirt unbuttoned – dancing with friends wearing horse-head masks.
“He just wasn’t himself, something was off, ” said Laver. He hit 15 aces in the set in spite of being humbled by Djokovic in the consecutive three games in the third set.
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The drenched tournament cleared a backlog of matches and finally closed the second round yesterday, when two-time champion Petra Kvitova lost to Ekaterina Makarova 7-5 7-6 (7-5).
