Novak Djokovic is officially unbeaten for a decade on the Wimbledon Centre Court as he booked a 3rd round at the event with a straight-sets win over Stan Wawrinka.
Wawrinka and Djokovic had some big battles over the years on the ATP Tour as the Swiss player managed to beat Djokovic in two Grand Slam finals. The Serbian joked about it a few days ago saying that Wawrinka took two Grand Slams away for him. That was an added motivation for Djokovic as those two finals were very painful losses for him.
More generally though, the Serbian mostly dominated this matchup beating Wawrinka plenty of times. This match was the 27th time they played and the 21st win for Djokovic as he got one match closer to setting another record. The Serbian has the most Grand Slam trophies when it comes to the men's side of the sport with 23 and he's going for number 24 at this Wimbledon.
If he wins it, he'll have eight of them which is the same amount Roger Federer has. He'll be tied at number one with the Swiss Ace for most Wimbledon trophies ever with a pretty good chance to dethrone him as the greatest grass player of all time. All that glory is up for grabs but there is one thing he already grabbed.
July 7th 2013 was exactly 10 years ago and it was also the last time Djokovic lost on the Wimbledon Centre Court. It was the final against Andy Murray and since then Djokovic has been unbeaten on the biggest court in SW19. With this win over Wawrinka, he is now unbeaten on the main court of the most prestigious Grand Slam for an entire decade.
When it comes to the match, it was a pretty strong performance from Novak. Wawrinka admitted before the match that he doesn't really have any chance and it really looked that way. The Serbian didn't face a single break point in the entire match, he lost only 4 points behind his first serve and only 14 points in total on his serve. He had 11 aces absolutely dominating play with 38 winners as well.
Wawrinka wasn't poor but he didn't serve well and that's a big no-no on grass. He finished the match with five aces but hit his first serve only 46 % of the time. That allowed Djokovic to be quite aggressive with his returns and he really came out determined to keep the rallies short and assert himself early in most of them.
The reason was simple, Djokovic wanted to avoid the curfew as he only had about two and half hours from the start of the match to avoid having to continue the match tomorrow. Wawrinka not serving well only helped him as he couldn't exert any pressure in the rallies. He also wasn't hitting the ball that well, certainly not up to his standard.
He only had 12 winners but also 27 unforced errors. The final score was 6-3, 6-1, 7-6(5) for Djokovic who avoids the curfew, makes tennis history, and comes closer to making even more tennis history. Not too bad.
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