Novak Djokovic reached the Wimbledon quarter-finals for the 16th time but it proved a hard day’s work at his Centre Court office as he ground past Australian Alex De Minaur on Monday.
The 38-year-old started abysmally and lost the opening set in 31 minutes but eventually assumed control of a cagey battle to win 1-6 6-4 6-4 6-4 to keep alive his quest for an unprecedented 25th Grand Slam title.
With Roger Federer watching from the front row of the Royal Box, the player whose record eight men’s titles Djokovic is trying to equal, the sixth seed’s usually surgical game malfunctioned early on as he dropped serve three times.
The hustling and bustling De Minaur continued to cause Djokovic headaches with his shot-placement and movement but the Serb found his range to win the next two sets full of attritional baseline rallies.
Even then Djokovic looked like getting dragged into a fifth set as De Minaur jumped 4-1 ahead in the fourth and had a point for a 5-1 lead, but he slammed the door shut just in time, winning five games in a row to take his place in the last eight where he will face Italian 22nd seed Flavio Cabolli.
“I don’t know how I’m feeling to be honest. I’m still trying to process the whole match and what happened on the court. It wasn’t a great start for me, it was a great start for Alex,” a weary Djokovic said on court.
Djokovic has now won 43 of his last 45 matches at Wimbledon and not since 2017 has he failed to reach the final.
The two losses were against Carlos Alcaraz in the last two finals, but for half an hour on Monday it looked as though Old Father Time might finally be catching up with him. Djokovic had never met the man nicknamed ‘Demon’ on a grass court after last year’s quarter-final between them never happened when the Australian withdrew with a hip injury.
He predicted beforehand that the 26-year-old would be a handful on the surface and he was proved right.
With a relaxed Federer watching in an immaculate blue suit and shades, Djokovic’s game crumbled into a heap of double-faults, errant forehands and clumsy footwork.
De Minaur’s game plan seemed to be to drag Djokovic into cat and mouse rallies and initially it worked.
But Djokovic rebooted his computer-like brain and chipped away at the Australian who must have believed he could snap his 10-match losing streak against top-10 players.
Djokovic won a 34-stroke rally early in the second set but with service breaks being traded like a plummeting stock and Federer heading off for afternoon tea he simply could not shake off the tenacious De Minaur.
Serving at 5-4, Djokovic had to save two break points before levelling the match. He looked more like his dominant best to control the third set and having not lost a two sets to one lead since 2010 it seemed like victory was a formality.
There was another twist though and it was a mightily relieved Djokovic who closed out the win.
Meanwhile, Belinda Bencic advanced to her first Wimbledon quarterfinal – 11 years after her All England Club debut – by beating 18th-seeded Ekaterina Alexandrova 7-6 (4), 6-4 on Monday.
Bencic, who lost in the fourth round on three previous occasions, failed to convert five match points while serving at 5-3 in the second set. But on the sixth one, Alexandrova sent a forehand long on No. 1 Court.
“For you guys it was entertaining,” Bencic said about that marathon game at 5-3, where Alexandrova finally converted her fourth break point to stay in the match. “For me it was a big stress.”
Bencic’s best result at a Grand Slam was reaching the semifinals at the 2019 US Open, where she also reached the quarters on two other occasions.
The Tokyo Olympic champion, playing at Wimbledon for the ninth time, had not been into the last eight at any of the other three majors, until now.
“I always got stuck in the fourth round (at Wimbledon),” Bencic said in an on-court interview. “So it was so important for me today to be able to kind of break through to the quarterfinal.”
Bencic missed last year’s grass-court Grand Slam tournament while she was on maternity leave, having given birth to her first child – a daughter named Bella – in April 2024.
She said traveling with a child on tour is still relatively easy while Bella is so young, but that she’s spending a lot more time taking pictures when she’s at tournaments.
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