“With a racket and a lot of heart” – Djokovic outlasts Auger-Aliassime in a five-hour epic to reach a record 15th Wimbledon semifinal

Novak Djokovic does not do farewells quietly. At 39, the seven-time champion dragged himself through five hours and 15 minutes of shifting momentum to beat Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime 7-6 (10), 3-6, 6-3, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (4) on Tuesday night, closing out the deciding-set tiebreak with six minutes to spare before the 11 p.m. curfew. Asked how he had won it, Djokovic kept it simple: “With a racket and a lot of heart.”

It was his heaviest test of the fortnight, and it carried him into a record-extending 15th Wimbledon semifinal.

The reward is the match everyone wanted. Djokovic will meet world No. 1 Jannik Sinner in the semifinals, a rematch of last year’s Wimbledon last four, which Sinner won on his way to the title, and of this year’s Australian Open semifinal, which Djokovic took in five sets. It pits the defending champion against the record 24-time major winner, both two wins from the final – and, for Djokovic, two wins from a 25th major and a record-equalling eighth Wimbledon crown.

Right now, it’s all business – I still have to recover

The Serbian No. 7 seed is now the sole owner of the all-time record for the most consecutive Wimbledon men’s singles semifinals, an eighth in a row, and has reached his 55th Grand Slam semifinal. He also becomes only the second man in the Open Era to make the last four here aged 39 or older, after Ken Rosewall in 1974 – another marker of a career that refuses to wind down.

During the on-court interview, Djokovic waved the milestones away. “That’s great, but it’s just another semifinal for me,” he said. “I’m going to look at all the numbers and everything when I finish my career. Right now, it’s all business – I still have to recover.” The records, for one more night at least, could wait.

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Djokovic left little doubt about what still drives him at 39. Having come through a fifth-set super-tiebreak he called “really anybody’s game,” the Serbian said the drama itself was the reward. “These are the kind of moments that I still play tennis for,” he said in his on-court interview, later describing it as “honestly one of the best matches I was part of on this court in my career.” He had even sent his children to bed after the fourth set – “I’m glad they stayed,” he admitted.

The opening set framed everything that followed, and it was cruel on Auger-Aliassime. Neither man could be broken across twelve games, the Canadian saving two set points at 5-4, before a rollercoaster tiebreak in which he held three set points of his own, at 6-5, 8-7 and 10-9. Each time Djokovic found an answer, and when Auger-Aliassime’s serve finally cracked at 11-10, the veteran pounced to steal it 12-10 – a set that could so easily have gone the other way.

Stung, the No. 3 seed responded superbly. His serve turned untouchable through the second set, a string of comfortable holds culminating in the break that levelled the match. But the effort of staying with Djokovic told in the third. Auger-Aliassime poured energy into surviving the early games – saving three break points in an 18-point marathon simply to hold for 1-1 – only for his resistance to collapse when it mattered, broken to love at 3-2 as Djokovic surged clear and back in front.

a war of serve and nerve

That should have been the beginning of the end. Instead, Auger-Aliassime produced the response of a bigger man than his record suggested. Broken to love to open the fourth and trailing 2-0, he broke straight back to level, held his nerve into another tiebreak and seized it 7-4 to force a decider – a set apiece, and a fifth set almost no one had predicted.

The decider became a war of serve and nerve. Not a single break was landed across twelve games, both men, remarkably, showing no sign of physical damage after five hours of tennis. Auger-Aliassime held to love serving to stay in it at 4-5, and saved the match again from 15-30 at 5-6, a 130 mph ace up the tee the shot of a player refusing to blink. But in the final-set tiebreak the margins tilted. Djokovic edged ahead early, and as the Auger-Aliassime backhand began to leak errors, the older man pulled away to take it 10-4 and end the contest at 10:54 p.m.

Djokovic : “no energy left, my friend”

For Auger-Aliassime, it was a night of what-ifs. He equalled his best Wimbledon result by reaching the quarterfinals, but his bid for a first semifinal here slipped away in a set he had three chances to win. His record in Wimbledon five-setters falls to 3-2; the one that got away will linger.

For Djokovic, it was another chapter in the most improbable of late-career runs. Few players in history have thrived in deciding sets as he has, and this survival only burnished the reputation, extending a Grand Slam five-set record that stood at 41-12 coming in.

Five hours and 15 minutes had plainly taken their toll, and Djokovic made no secret of it when the questions kept coming. “Let’s keep it short, because I have no energy left, my friend,” he told his interviewer, only half-joking, before agreeing to one last question. His mind, by then, had already wandered ahead: “I wish it was the final, so I don’t need to worry about how the body will feel tomorrow.”