Serbia’s Novak Djokovic celebrates beating Germany’s Tommy Haas during their fourth round matchat Wimbledon at the All England Club in Wimbledon, southwest London, yesterday. RIGHT: Britain’s Andy Murray celebrates beating Russia’s Mikhail Youzhny during their fourth round at the same venue.
LONDON: Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray edged closer to an epic Wimbledon final showdown yesterday while Poland played Grand Slam gatecrashers by guaranteeing at least a semi-final spot.
World number one Djokovic, the 2011 champion, dropped his serve for the first time at this year’s tournament before beating Tommy Haas, the 35-year-old German 13th seed, 6-1, 6-4, 7-6 (7/4) in the fourth round.
Djokovic will be playing in his 17th successive Grand Slam quarter-final where he will face Tomas Berdych, the seventh seed and 2010 runner-up, who beat Australia’s Bernard Tomic, 7-6 (7/4), 6-7 (5/7), 6-4, 6-4.
Djokovic boasts a 13-2 career record over Berdych but lost to him at Wimbledon in 2010.
“Haas is always a tough opponent. I had lost to him twice on grass before. He has great variety in his game and I always knew it would be a tough challenge,” said Djokovic, who fired 13 aces and 40 winners.
“It was never going to be easy. I had to work for my games but I served well and returned well. I am happy to have closed it out in straight sets.
“I am playing really good tennis now, maybe even better than when I won the title in 2011.”
Second seed Murray took another step closer to ending Britain’s agonising 77-year wait for a men’s champion when he survived a second set wobble to carve out a 6-4, 7-6 (7/5), 6-1 win over Russian 20th seed Mikhail Youzhny.
Murray, the runner-up to Roger Federer in 2012, will face Spain’s Fernando Verdasco for a place in the semi-finals.
Verdasco, a former world number nine who now stands at 54 in the world and is playing his 41st successive major, reached his first Wimbledon quarter-final with a 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 win over unseeded Frenchman Kenny De Schepper.
Davis Cup team-mates Jerzy Janowicz and Lukasz Kubot set-up the first ever all-Polish quarter-final.
Juan Martin Del Potro’s battered body muscled into the Wimbledon quarter-finals, but the Argentine has only two days to recover from troublesome injuries before facing the endurance man of tennis in David Ferrer.
Meanwhile in the women’s event, Chinese sixth seed Li Na raced into the quarter-finals with a 6-2, 6-0 demolition of Italian 11th seed Roberta Vinci. Next up for Li is Polish fourth seed Agnieszka Radwanska, last year’s runner-up, who is now the highest ranked player left after a 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 win against Bulgaria’s Tsvetana Pironkova.
“Every match is a different story. It doesn’t matter what ranking they having,” Radwanska said. AGENCIES
