Djokovic advances after scolding ump

LONDON — All it took was a couple of questionable calls for Novak Djokovic to snap at the chair umpire in the second game of his third-round match atWimbledon.

“That’s two points in a row at the beginning of the match,” Djokovic said, before telling official Jake Garner: “Focus, please!”

That would have been good advice for Djokovic himself. Maybe hewas a bit on edge because this was the stage at which, as a two-time defending champion, he lost at the All England Club a year ago.

On Saturday, Djokovic briefly fell behind by an early break before zipping past Ernests Gulbis of Latvia 6-4, 6-1, 7-6 (2) to earn his 10th berth in the tournament’s secondweek.

Right after his, er, conversation with Garner, Djokovic lost a service game to trail 2-1. He later fell behind 4-2 in the opening set.

But from there, the No. 2-seeded Djokovic used a nine-game run to seize control and wasn’t broken again.

“As soon as you give a guy like Novak the tools to step on the gas, he will step on the gas,” said Gulbis, who has been a top-10 player and a French Open semifinalist but missed chunks of time because of injuries, dropping his ranking outside the top 500. “And he just goes, and he doesn’t look back.”

After the grass-court Grand Slam tournament’s traditional middle Sunday off, Djokovic will face 51stranked Adrian Mannarino of France for a place in the quarterfinals.

All 16 fourth-round singles matches are scheduled forMonday.

Asked about telling the chair umpire to “focus,” Djokovic smiled sheepishly before responding, “Well, I think he’s probably frustrated with me saying that. Maybe it was not the right words to say. I apologize.”

Djokovic called it “very odd” that there were two rulings so early that he disagreed with.

“He’s trying to do his job the best that he can. I am, too. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, you exchange things,” Djokovic said. “But I think we’ll be fine.”