Wimbledon has served up some exciting results as the tournament progresses towards its final stages.
Flavio Cobolli upset Alex de Minaur to knock out the final Australian from Wimbledon – he made light work of the match and won in straight sets.
A second set tie break gave him a sniff at equalling to one set a piece but de Minaur couldn’t hold on, losing the set seven tiebreak points to four.
Novak Djokovic proved he is still a threat to the tournament at 39 years of age, wrestling his way to a taxing five set victory over Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime.
The five hour and 15 minute war resulted in tiebreaks on the first, fourth and fifth sets – Felix dominating the serve with 29 aces and an 80 percent win rate on the first serve.
The Serbian now equals Ken Rosewall’s record as the oldest player to reach a semi final in the men’s competition at Wimbledon – he set that in 1974.
Tennis commentator Brett Phillips joined Sports Breakfast this morning.
“What else can we say about Novak Djokovic? 39 years of age; five hours and 15 minutes; he makes the semi finals again. It is just remarkable,” he said.
“His game is still in such good order, but can he win seven matches, best of five, to get this 25th major?”
Djokovic will be doing everything he can to recover quickly for his match against the first seeded Italian Jannik Sinner on Centre Court later in the week.
Both players have struggled with health complications recently – Novak’s age now beginning to show in the back-end of tournaments while Sinner made an early second round exit at Roland Garros after experiencing unexplained illness on the court.
“I have said many a time, I don’t think he [Djokovic] can win a 25th, but this is his best chance on grass, which is a little kinder under foot.”
“He’s got a couple of days to recover now, but he’s got to play Sinner.”
The Serbian overcame the Italian earlier in the year at the Australian Open in five sets – Friday’s clash is expected to live up to expectations.
Naomi Osaka went down in straight sets to Czechia’s Karolína Muchová, now moving on to play Coco Gauff after she took down fellow American Jessica Pegula in three sets.
Gauff recovered from a dropped first set and was clinical on the break winning five out of five breakpoints.
Osaka lost a tiebreak in the first set to Muchová and the Czech was able to break serve in the second set and serve out the match.
“Great stuff from Coco, she just fought really hard – I think she’s getting better each match to be honest.”
“She’s got a six-to-one hit-to-hit against Karolína Muchová in their semi final matchup. Muchová won their most recent encounter in Stuttgart in the lead up to Wimbledon on the grass so that’ll be good memories for her.
“She [Muchová] dealt with the power of Osaka today… She was just able to go to a few things in the toolkit which served her really well in absorbing that Osaka pace.”
Taylor Fritz plays Alexander Zverev and Flavio Cobolli takes on Arthur Fery tonight to round out the quarter finals in the men’s tournament while Linda Nosková and Elise Mertens, and Marta Kostyuk and Jasmine Paolini do the same in the women’s.
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