after beating defending champion Jannik Sinner<\/a> 3-6, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 in four hours and nine minutes.<\/p>\nIt was the second epic semifinal of the day after top seed Alcaraz beat third seed Alexander Zverev in the third-longest Australian Open match ever – 6-4, 7-6(5), 6-7(3), 6-7(4), 7-5 in five hours and 27 minutes – to reach his first final at Melbourne Park.<\/p>\n
He will face a man who has a perfect 10-0 record in Australian Open finals and who enjoyed phenomenal support on Friday night despite an at-times fraught relationship with Aussie fans.<\/p>\n
“I love our passionate relationship, every year it’s something different,” Djokovic said on court after his win.<\/p>\n
“Tonight has been one of the best, if not the best, nights atmosphere wise [and] support wise I’ve ever had in Australia, for sure.”<\/p>\n
Sunday’s final will mark the first time Djokovic has featured on the last day of a grand slam since Wimbledon 2024, which was also the last time Sinner missed the decider in a major.<\/p>\n
Djokovic has not won a slam since the 2023 US Open and standing in the way of him becoming the first player to win 25 major singles titles is Alcaraz, a man 16 years his junior who beat him in that 2024 final at the All England Club.<\/p>\n
“I just hope I’ll have enough gas to stand toe to toe with him and let God decide the winner,” Djokovic said.<\/p>\n
Both players will carry some questions over fitness into the final with Djokovic looking ill for much of the third set against Sinner, while Alcaraz may have picked up a right leg injury against Zverev.<\/p>\n
The world number one started limping late in the third set after winning the first two, with Zverev complaining to the tournament supervisor about the world number one getting a medical timeout for what he believed to be cramps.<\/p>\n
Zverev fought back to win the third and fourth sets in tiebreaks and was up a break in the deciding fifth set before a fit-again Alcaraz rattled off our straight games to complete the victory.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Australia’s Olivia Gadecki and John Peers successfully defended their mixed doubles title at Melbourne Park, coming from a set down to win in a thrilling 10-point tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
– ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Serbia’s Novak Djokovic hits a return to Italy’s Jannik Sinner during their men’s singles semi-final match on day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-259870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Serbia's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4JTYMMM_AFP__20260130__94KY4ME__v1__HighRes__TennisAusOpen_jpg.jpeg\")
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