Djokovic takes full advantage of wounded Federer

After a tournament of coruscating five-setters, yesterday’s meeting between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer – the two most successful men in the Australian Open’s history – should have been another humdinger.

It probably would have been, had Federer arrived at this semi-final feeling chipper. Unfortunately, he had been personally responsible for a couple of those earlier thrillers, and thus walked onto the court with a wounded groin.

The result was a phoney war. Federer came out swinging for everything, and finding his mark on a series of beautiful backhands that carried him into a 4-1 first-set lead.

But Djokovic later admitted that he had forgotten to focus on his own tennis at this stage. He was instead keeping half an eye on Federer’s movement. From the stands, it looked solid enough. To a fellow professional, the lack of extension and dynamism was unmistakable.

“I had been told by the team to prioritise my own things rather than thinking about how he’s feeling or how he’s going to move,” Djokovic said after fighting his way to a 7-6, 6-4, 6-3 win. “But it’s easier said than done. At the beginning, I was paying too much attention on his movement. I wasn’t in the right balance. I wasn’t hitting the ball.

“Obviously, he was hurting. You could see it in his movement. I know how it feels when you’re hurt on the court. I know the amount of thoughts that go through your mind, whether or not you should continue. I think it’s an amazing fact that he has never retired, not a single match, throughout his career. Huge respect for that.”

Federer later admitted that he had given himself no more than a three per cent chance of pulling off a shock.

Yet this, he added, was considerably better than zero. It sounds as if he still has nightmares about the back injury he suffered at the ATP

Finals in 2014, which forced him to pull out of the trophy match, and thus required Andy Murray to be summoned from his Nintendo game of Mario Kart for an exhibition.

He was desperate to avoid a repeat yesterday. “I went for a scan that same night,” Federer said, in reference to his faltering yet courageous win over Tennys Sandgren in Tuesday’s quarter-final, in which he staved off seven match points. “It was all right. After that, we didn’t push it. I took a day off. “Today was horrible, to go through what I did. Nice entrance, nice send-off, and in between is one to forget. I felt like at least it was probably not going to get worse. If it did, this would have been my first retirement. We did talk about it with the team, how bad is it allowed to feel. It never went there, so that’s good. But you’re playing careful, obviously.”

So Djokovic continued his smooth progress to an eighth Australian Open final, where he will play the winner of today’s second semi-final between Dominic Thiem and Alexander Zverev. Both have beaten him on an indoor hard court at London’s O2 Arena over the past couple of seasons, so the result of the tournament is not yet a formality. But it should also be noted that Djokovic has never lost a final on Rod Laver Arena.

He has beaten Murray in four trophy matches, Rafael Nadal in two and Jo-wilfried Tsonga in the odd one out, when he was still only 20 years old.

In other words, Djokovic’s prospects of a 17th major title – and a return to world No1 – are so bright that he had better wear shades.