Live from Wimbledon Day 9 - Djokovic keeps dream of 25 alive

**Catherine** (0:11)
Hello and welcome to The Tennis Podcast, live from Wimbledon and presented by Barclays, the official banking partner of Wimbledon. It is day nine of the tournament, a day that has just ended in dramatic and exhausting fashion on Centre Court with 39-year-old Novak Djokovic winning the longest quarterfinal in Wimbledon history. Five hours and 15 minutes for the win over Felix Auger-Aliassime. 7-6 in the fifth set just minutes before the curfew was due to hit. David and Matt were both in there in the press seats on Centre Court.
David, how's he doing this?

**David** (0:59)
It is absolutely astonishing what he's doing, I think.
It was an ups and down sort of match. Again, that was not the cleanest Novak Djokovic performance you will see. Part of that. Oh, close the place down and let us talk.

**Catherine** (1:19)
Come on, Matt.

**Matt** (1:20)
Sorry. Make sure you take all your belongings with you.
We hope you've enjoyed your day here at Wimbledon. Wish you a pleasant and safe journey home. Thank you. I want to hear David.

**David** (1:33)
Thank you. Right. Well, the thing is, I don't think he's really capable of producing the sort of level he produced in the fifth set for really, really long periods of time anymore. And I think that that is perfectly normal. Also, he was playing an opponent that was pushing him to the absolute limits. I think Felix Auger-Aliassime played pretty much as well as he can and deserves great credit and respect for taking it that close, down to the wire after five hours. But the fact of the matter is, Djokovic still found it. He's nearly 40 and he found it. He found the level when he needed it to get the win. And there were several moments in the match that I just found myself open-mouthed that he was sort of winning the points. And, you know, when I thought maybe he'd gone, then there were moments where I thought he'd got it. And he suddenly let it go and, I mean, an example being that in the, once the first set had gone and he sort of found his way back at the end of the second set, but too late. You know, he was suddenly, he was struggling for his rhythm and he couldn't quite break back in order to take the second set. And then in the third set, he'd got it again. And he raced through that set.
Fourth set, he was too live up. And honestly, I thought it was, he was just going to run through the finish line and he threw in a love 40 broken to love game. And again, Felix pushed him to make these things happen. But the fact is that when they got into the fifth set and it was three, four on Felix Auger-Aliassime served, the crowd rose as a standing ovation and sent goose bumps through everybody, certainly me, Matt, and I think the players. And that then produced the energy that got them to the finish line. And it's that kind of thing, you know, how can you play for five hours when you're 39?
Adrenaline and match management and all those years of experience.

**Catherine** (3:45)
Yeah, that's the problem, isn't it? How's it going to feel when the adrenaline fades? We'll come on to that. We'll do the look ahead to the remains of Novak Djokovic against Jannik Sinner in a few days time. I feel like the match should get more dues.
Did you enjoy it as a tennis match level-wise? How good was it?

**Matt** (4:07)
I thought it was good. Yeah, I think David's absolutely right. It was in and out. It wasn't always brilliant, but the highs were so high and dramatic as well. We haven't even talked about the incredible first set tiebreak that went on so long. I think Argentina managed to score three goals in the World Cup in the duration of this tiebreak.

**David** (4:27)
I can't really remember the tiebreak.

**Matt** (4:29)
Which was splitting viewing in the media restaurant where I watched this.

**Catherine** (4:34)
I can't believe that football match happened during this during this match.
It feels like that match took up most of Wimbledon. Unbelievable.

**Matt** (4:46)
And that was a tiebreak where Auger-Aliassime had his chances. Had multiple set points and on a couple of them Novak Djokovic hit great serves. There was one when he hit, he shanked a ball Djokovic on Felix's set point and it still went in. And you just thought when Djokovic won that set, it was going to be vital for him because to expend that much energy and not come away with the set at almost 40 years old could have been a disaster, but he did get it. And then over the next few sets, as David describes, there were moments where he was striking the ball, Djokovic, where I thought, oh, well, he's beating Jannik Sinner in a few days' time. Like his ball striking just went to a level kind of that we saw in Australia. And it was like, well, he can do anything he wants with the ball, down the line, cross court.