THERE they were, two of the greatest players in the history of tennis, hanging around in the All England Club member’s locker room for hours waiting for their Wimbledon semi-final to be played, writes Stewart Fisher.
But they, and the rest of the watching world, must wait a while longer for an outcome.
The 52nd career meeting between Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic will resume at 1pm today, after play was called for the night, two minutes over the Merton Council curfew at 11.02pm, with the Serb holding a two sets to one lead, having nicked what could have been a pivotal third-set tie breaker to lead 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 (9).
With the roof closed shortly before they came on court to ward off potential showers, it remains to be seen if the match will continue indoors or not. However long it goes on, though, the women’s final between Serena Williams and Angelique Kerber will just have to wait.
That at least seems like a commonsense decision in what became a very complicated Friday for the All England schedulers.
The Centre Court crowd booed as their heroes went off, wondering if Wimbledon will fall into line with the US Open when it comes to introducing a tie-break in the fifth set of all matches, something which has been in place on the other side of the pond since the 1970s. But they could hardly feel short-changed complain about the quality of tennis these two superstars served up for them when they finally appeared. With Kevin Anderson having prevailed in the day’s opening, brutal semi-final, the winner of this match will be a short odds favourite to add to their already bulging collections of Grand Slam trophies.
Quite simply, no match up has appeared more frequently in tour level meetings in the history of the sport.
The 14th time they have done battle at the slams, each of these players tends to be the other’s worst enemy in the major competitions.
And it was Djokovic, who has the edge 26 to 25 in the previous meetings between this pair, and prevailed on the last meeting on grass, the 2011 Wimbledon final, who struck first. Breaking for a 4-3 lead in that first set, he showed the new-found confidence after the best part of two years of elbow problems to serve it out to love.
Nadal had the weight of the crowd support – of course he did – and the Mallorcan, chasing his first final at this venue since 2011, surfed that wave of support to level matters up. Dragging Djokovic here and there with drop shots, he even saw three set points come and go in that third set tie-break but it was the Serb who edged it. Nadal is now one set away from glory and a golden shot at a 13th Grand Slam title.
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