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MELBOURNE, Australia — Nobody has ever been better at this end of the Australian Open than Novak Djokovic, the 10-time champion.
Every time he’s won a quarterfinal at Melbourne Park — as he did against Taylor Fritz on Tuesday — he’s gone on to win the title.
The odds are usually stacked against his semifinal rival. Perhaps even more so against fourth-seeded Jannik Sinner, who won a quarterfinal over No. 5 Andrey Rublev that didn’t start until 10:42 p.m. and didn’t finish until 1:21 a.m. Wednesday.
Djokovic reached his record-extending 48th Grand Slam semifinal by beating Fritz 7-6 (3), 4-6, 6-2, 6-3 in 3 3/4 hours. Their match started late in the heat of the afternoon because US Open champion Coco Gauff’s win over Marta Kostyuk took more than three hours in the women’s quarterfinal on Rod Laver Arena.
In an on-court interview with Australian player Nick Kyrgios, who has been sidelined by a long-term injury, Djokovic made a light-hearted joke about getting popcorn and watching Sinner vs. Rublev on late-night TV.
In his later news conference, Djokovic said Sinner’s late finish wouldn’t make a difference come the semifinals.
“What kind of advantage will I have? We have two days. It’s not much of an advantage that I see there,” he said.
Sinner was down 5-1 in the second-set tiebreaker before winning six straight points, starting with a stunning crosscourt forehand, to turn momentum and take the match 6-4, 7-6 (5), 6-3.
“I want to thank everyone for staying so long. It’s 1:25,” Sinner said in his on-court interview. “It’s always a huge pleasure to play here on this court. It doesn’t really matter the time.”
Since he lost to Djokovic in the Wimbledon semifinals last year, Sinner has won two of his three matches against the 24-time major winner.
“I’m really lucky to face him again [in] one of the biggest tournaments in the world,” he said. “Happy I can play the No. 1 in the world. He won here some times!”
Sinner hasn’t dropped a set yet.
Djokovic, meanwhile, has spent more time on court so far through five rounds than ever at Melbourne Park — more than 15 hours — but thinks he’s still building into it. He’s on a 33-match winning streak at the Australian Open — a tournament record he shares with his childhood inspiration, Monica Seles.
The first game took 16 minutes, and the first set lasted 1 hour, 24 minutes. Fritz got the first break of serve, and Djokovic said he was on the back foot at times until the third set.
“Credit to him for playing really well. You could see that he had a clear game plan. He was really sharp,” Djokovic said. “So it was definitely a struggle for me to play the first couple sets.
“In the third, things started to come together. I started to swing through the ball better. I started to feel better on the court. Serve, also. I wasn’t serving well at all first two sets, and then third and fourth, great.”
Fritz saved the first 15 break points he faced, an unheard-of stat against one of the best returners ever.
“My conversion was really poor, but in the end of the day, I managed to break him when it mattered,” Djokovic said. “I upped my game midway through the third set, all the way to the end.”
The first game set the tone for a long, tough match. It contained 24 points, going to deuce nine times.
Then followed the longest first set of the tournament.
After Fritz held in the 11th game, Djokovic was agitated in the changeover and gesturing to get the attention of his support team, calling for salts.
But after holding and taking the set to a tiebreaker, Djokovic finished a 21-shot rally with a stunning backhand crosscourt winner to get five set points. He put his finger to his ear, nodded his head and blew a kiss toward a commentary box at the rear of the court.
It was Fritz who got the first service break to open the second set, having fended off eight in the first set against him.
He saved another seven break point chances in the second, mostly with clean winners, and maintained the break to level at one set apiece, closing with an ace.
After all that resistance, though, Fritz was broken in the second game of the third set when Djokovic converted his 16th chance. Djokovic broke again, at love, in the ninth game to wrap up the third set in 38 minutes.
In the fourth, there was an exchange of breaks until Djokovic served it out from 5-3 to improve to 9-0 against Fritz in career head-to-heads.
Fritz said the late start for Sinner and Rublev would be tough for whoever advanced, and scheduling had come up in the locker rooms after Daniil Medvedev’s second-round match didn’t start until after 11 p.m. and didn’t finish until almost 4 in the morning. He said with physio, treatment and wrapping up, it takes hours after the match to get to sleep.
“It … just screws up your whole clock,” Fritz said. “I pray for those guys.”
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