Testy Djokovic into the second week
The second-ranked men’s player is broken early in first set at Wimbledon.
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 thirdround match at Wimbledon.
“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 he was 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 second week.
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, Djokovic used a ninegame 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.”
Three of Djokovic’s 12 major championships have come at Wimbledon, and after a real dip in results over the past 12 months, he has not dropped a set so far this fortnight.
“That only can boost my confidence level,” the No. 2seeded Djokovic said, “for whatever is coming up next.”
After the grass-court Grand Slam tournament’s traditional middle Sunday off, he will face 51st-ranked Adrian Mannarino of France for a place in the quarter- finals.
All 16 fourth-round singles matches are scheduled for Monday.
No. 3 Roger Federer, like Djokovic, has won every set he’s played this week, including Saturday’s 7-6 (3), 6-4, 6-4 win against No. 27 Mischa Zverev.
“It’s important to get through the first week with a good feeling,” said Federer, who compiled hard-to-believe official statistics of 61 winners to a mere seven unforced errors, “and I think I got that.”
The result made Federer the first man to get to 15-0 in third-round matches at Wimbledon.
Women’s No. 1 Angelique Kerber held on to beat Shelby Rogers of the United States 4-6, 7-6 (2), 6-4 in the third round.
After dropping the opening set against Rogers on Saturday, Kerber trailed 3-1 in the second before turning things around.
The top-ranked German will next face 2015 Wimbledon finalist Garbine Muguruza on Monday. Muguruza, the 2016 French Open champion, beat Sorana Cirstea 6-2, 6-2.
Top-ranked women’s doubles player Bethanie Mattek-Sands needs surgery after dislocating her right kneecap and rupturing her patellar tendon during a singles match Thursday against Cirstea.