Seven-times champion Novak Djokovic produced some of his best tennis to outclass Italian 25th seed Lorenzo Musetti 6-4 7-6(2) 6-4 on Friday and reach a 10th Wimbledon final, where he will meet holder\u00a0Carlos Alcaraz\u00a0in a mouthwatering 2023 rematch.<\/p>\n
With Centre Court still filling up following Alcaraz’s 6-7(1) 6-3 6-4 6-4 victory over fifth seed Daniil Medvedev a short while earlier, second seed Djokovic broke after a breathtaking 26-shot rally in the sixth game of the opening set.<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old raised his arms and demanded more from the crowd, but that only spurred Musetti into action as the 22-year-old broke back for 4-5 with a bullet forehand – only to gift the set to his opponent after a shaky service game.<\/p>\n
Musetti quickly made amends and inroads in the second set, producing a stunning backhand pass for a 3-1 lead, but Djokovic was unperturbed as he clawed his way back and raised his level significantly at the end to clinch the tiebreak.<\/p>\n
With a sixth straight All England Club final and his first of an unusually patchy season within sight, the 24-times Grand Slam champion pounced for a break in the opening game of the third set with a backhand crosscourt winner.<\/p>\n
Djokovic mixed up his game by serving and volleying to leave Musetti on the ropes, before staving off a late comeback attempt from the Italian to save a breakpoint and prevail on his fourth matchpoint when the Italian sent a shot long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Djokovic produced some of his best tennis to outclass Italian 25th seed Musetti 6-4 7-6(2) 6-4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":965500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-965499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=965499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/965500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=965499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elections.sabc.co.za\/elections2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=965499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}