Djokovic takes his own advice
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 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 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 6-4, 6-1, 7-6 (2) to earn his 10th berth in the tournament’s second week.
Right after his 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 nine-game run to seize control.
“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.
After the grass-court Grand Slam tournament’s traditional middle Sunday off, he will face 51st-ranked Adrian Mannarino for a place in the quarterfinals.
All 16 fourth-round singles matches are scheduled for Monday — Wimbledon is the only major that does it that way — including these in the bottom half of the men’s draw: No. 3 Roger Federer versus No. 13 Grigor Dimitrov, a guy nicknamed “Baby Fed” because of his similarities to the seventime Wimbledon champion; 2016 runner-up Milos Raonic versus No. 10 Alexander Zverev; and 2010 runner-up Tomas Berdych versus No. 8 Dominic Thiem.
Federer, like Djokovic, has won every set he’s played in Wimbledon’s early rounds, including Saturday’s 7-6 (3), 6-4, 6-4 victory over No. 27 Mischa Zverev, Alexander’s brother.
“It’s important to get through the first week with a good feeling,” said Federer, who compiled official statistics of 61 winners to seven unforced errors, “and I think I got that.”
The result made Federer the first man to get to 15-0 in thirdround matches at Wimbledon.
The matchups on the top half of the men’s draw are defending champion Andy Murray versus Benoit Paire, two-time Wimbledon winner Rafael Nadal versus No. 16 Gilles Muller, No. 7 Marin Cilic versus No. 18 Roberto Bautista Agut, and No. 24 Sam Querrey versus Kevin Anderson.
Women’s fourth-rounders: five-time champion Venus Williams versus No. 27 Ana Konjuh, No. 1 Angelique Kerber versus No. 14 Garbine Muguruza, No. 2 Simona Halep versus two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka, French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko versus No. 4 Elina Svitolina, No. 6 Johanna Konta versus No. 21 Caroline Garcia, No. 7 Svetlana Kuznetsova versus 2012 runner-up Agnieszka Radwanska, No. 5 Caroline Wozniacki versus No. 24 CoCo Vandeweghe, and Magdalena Rybarikova versus Petra Martic.
After completing his career Grand Slam by winning last year’s French Open for a fourth consecutive major title, Djokovic went through some struggles, including his upset loss to Querrey at Wimbledon.
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.”