He will on Thursday take on Czech seventh seed Tomas Berdych, who beat Spanish 11th seed David Ferrer 6-3, 7-5, 6-3. Frustrated at missing a break point, Djokovic went to smash his racquet into the ground but it slipped out of his grasp before it flew into the backwall on Philippe Chatrier Court.
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The official dodged out of the way and the racket hit the back fence.
David Nalbandian was famously disqualified during the final at Queen’s Club in 2012 after kicking an advertising hoarding into a line judge’s shin.
Djokovic said he appreciated the organisers’ dilemma. I was lucky there.
If Murray is to go on to lift the trophy, he will have to join Wawrinka and Nadal in denying Djokovic the title he craves more than any other. “It’s the first time I have played a semi-final on the Suzanne Lenglen court”, said the top seed. I have had situations before, plenty of situations before where I thought that the courts were not good enough, you know, for us to perform at such a high level because it was quite unsafe on the edge to twist your ankle or, God forbid, something else.
“It was just some unfortunate bounce, but fortunate ending of the scenario”.
“I mean, if he would (have) hit the [linesman], it would be over”, Berdych commented. Bacsinszky then got a break back and held serve to recover to 2-4. It’s a first grand slam quarterfinal for Thiem and the 13th-ranked Belgian, who downed Ernests Gulbis 4-6 6-2 6-2 6-3.
Like Djokovic, she too is playing catch-up in the schedule with a quarter-final Thursday, potential semi-final Friday and title match on Saturday.
The Serbian appeared to let the conditions get to him in the first set on Tuesday, but, although never finding his best form, he was mentally tuned in thereafter.
Two days and four sets were needed to Novak Djokovic to win for the fifth time in his career against the Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut, The reason?
At 3-3, it was Berdych who was furious when Djokovic’s protestations about the slipperiness of the court led to a brief rain delay.
The match originally was supposed to be played Monday, but was postponed twice because of rain.
“There’s not many players that do that now because before three of the slams were played on grass, and now they’re on the different surfaces. Probably that’s when they are pushed under pressure, that they are making decisions like that”.
It has been Djokovic’ s 30th Grand Slam semifinal, while only Roger Federer with 39 major semis and Jimmy Connors with 31 have participated in more in the Open era.
He also handled the occasion superbly, maintaining his focus throughout and not allowing the crowd, who roared when Wawrinka won the third set, to distract him.
He served for it and then had a set point in the tie-break but Thiem saved it after turning defence into attack quite brilliantly. But Thiem somehow managed to survive a grueling rally at 6-7 in the tiebreaker and that proved to be the decisive turning point of the match.
“I’m sure that they already heard it million times, that we need a roof, that we need lights”, Djokovic said. He didn’t do any mistakes.
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Prediction: I think that Djokovic will dispatch Berdych in straight sets.
