Novak Djokovic, seeking a 24th Grand Slam title to equal Margaret Court’s all-time record, qualified for the Wimbledon round of 16 on Friday by beating Switzerland’s Stan Wawrinka (88th) 6-3, 6-1 , 7-6 (7/5).
After very quietly winning the first two sets, the Serb was hooked in the third and concluded just minutes before the 11:00 p.m. curfew came into force. “We knew it would be difficult to finish today and that one of us had to win in straight sets. It was going well for me in the first two sets and then he raised his level while I went down a bit.“, commented Djokovic, pointing out that Wawrinka had been “two points away from extending the game” see you Saturday.
But the joker got out in time and will face the Pole Hubert Hurkacz (18th) for a place in the quarterfinals. With that success, Djokovic notched a 31st straight Wimbledon victory since losing in the quarterfinals in 2017. He has since gone unbeaten with four consecutive titles. A fifth on July 16 would allow her to equal the record of eight Wimbledon titles held by Roger Federer, one length from the absolute record of Martina Navratilova.
For his part, Wawrinka, one of the few players to have won a Grand Slam during the era of domination by Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, won the Australian Open (2014), Roland-Garros (2015 ) and the US Open (2016), but the 38-year-old Swiss has never made it past the quarter-finals at Wimbledon (reached in 2014 and 2015).
