Djokovic perseveres in epic match; Nadal cruises
NEW YORK — The game took 21 minutes. It lasted 30 points.
Novak Djokovic squandered five break points and lost that instant classic of a game but made Stanislas Wawrinka pay an awfully heavy price.
After dropping the epic third game of the final set Saturday, Djokovic broke the next time Wawrinka served, then didn’t falter once he had the lead. The top-seeded Serb withstood a 4-hour, 9-minute onslaught of Wawrinka’s massive groundstrokes to pull out a 2-6, 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory and advance to his fourth straight final at the U.S. Open.
“Well, I was thinking — I guess everybody was thinking — ‘Whoever wins this game is going to win the match,’ ” Djokovic said. “After he won the game, I thought to myself, ‘OK, I guess I have to fight against those odds.’”
He did, to improve to 20-7 in five-set matches, and now the 2011 champion will go for his second U.S. Open title Monday against No. 2 seed Rafael Nadal, who beat No. 8 Richard Gasquet 6-4, 7-6 (1), 6-2.
This is the first time since 1996 that both U.S. Open finals will pit No. 1 vs. No. 2. On Sunday, top-seeded Serena Williams plays second-seeded Victoria Azarenka for the women’s title.
Djokovic’s victory Saturday will be remembered mostly for a game he lost — the third game of the final set, a rollercoaster ride in which Djokovic had five opportunities to break for a 2-1 lead and lost them all.
Ninth-seeded Wawrinka had eight game points. Before the last, he gestured to the crowd to pump up the volume. Sensing the opportunity, Djokovic hammed it up, as well. Wawrinka followed that welldeserved break in the action with a 123-mph service winner up the middle.
“It was a really long game with some good points and some big mistakes,” said Wawrinka, of Switzerland, who made it farther than his country’s most famous player, Roger Federer, for the first time in any of his 35 Grand Slam appearances.
In the later match, Nadal extended his streak without losing a service game to 73 before eighth-seeded Gasquet broke him in the fourth game of the second set.
Still, it was a straight-set victory for Nadal. Can Djokovic recover from his epic match in time? He’s just happy to be there.
“I managed to find my way through, to adjust, and to win,” Djokovic said. “That’s what counts.”