Key Points
- Djokovic beat Auger-Aliassime 7-6, 3-6, 6-3, 6-7, 7-6 on July 7.
- The five-set win lasted more than five hours on Centre Court.
- He faces No. 1 seed Jannik Sinner in the semifinals.
- A title would give Djokovic a record 25th Grand Slam.
Novak Djokovic needed more than five hours to get through the quarterfinals, and it may be the most he has had to spend in a single match this year. On July 7, the No. 7 seed outlasted Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime 7-6(10), 3-6, 6-3, 6-7(4), 7-6(4) on Centre Court to reach the Wimbledon semifinals, where he meets top seed Jannik Sinner, CBS Sports reported.
The match swung on tiebreaks. Djokovic saved the opener in a 12-10 first-set breaker, surrendered a tight fourth to Auger-Aliassime, and closed it out in a final-set tiebreak — the kind of tenth-point margin that has defined the back half of his career, when the returns are a step slower but the nerve holds. He now stands two wins from a 25th Grand Slam singles title, which would break the all-time record he currently shares with Margaret Court and stand alone as the most in tennis history.
The read: at 39, every one of these is a referendum on the closing window, and the draw has arranged the sport’s clearest generational test — Djokovic against Sinner, the 24-year-old No. 1 who now sets the standard he spent two decades holding. Djokovic has not added a major since the 2023 US Open, and a Sinner semifinal is exactly the wall that has stopped him at recent slams. It is the same veteran-versus-youth story that framed his 2026 Roland-Garros run, now transplanted to the grass where his game still travels best.
He advances into the second week of a tournament that has belonged mostly to the women’s draw for headlines — a run of upsets that left six Americans alive at the halfway mark, five of them women, and carried Coco Gauff into her first Wimbledon quarterfinal. In the bottom half, British wild card Arthur Fery reached a semifinal of his own. Djokovic’s semifinal is expected to be played this weekend.
That women’s draw has since produced its champion: Karolína Muchová beat Gauff in the Wimbledon women’s final.
Source: CBS Sports.
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