{"id":684346,"date":"2026-07-10T14:29:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T14:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/684346\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T14:29:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T14:29:14","slug":"wimbledon-semi-finals-2026-novak-djokovic-and-jannik-sinner-meet-again-with-history-on-the-line-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/684346\/","title":{"rendered":"Wimbledon semi-finals 2026: Novak Djokovic and Jannik Sinner meet again with history on the line"},"content":{"rendered":"

You wouldn’t normally expect a 39-year-old who had just spent five hours and 15 minutes on court to challenge the world number one in a Wimbledon semi-final.<\/p>\n

But this is Novak Djokovic we’re talking about – and he is, in the best way possible, not normal.<\/a><\/p>\n

On Friday, Djokovic will face world number one and defending champion Jannik Sinner for a place in Sunday’s final.<\/p>\n

They met at this stage last year, with Sinner winning in straight sets despite having an elbow injury and Djokovic struggling after a fall in his previous round.<\/p>\n

This time around, Sinner is injury-free and has not dropped a set after his opening match went the distance.<\/p>\n

However, Djokovic needed a medical timeout after tweaking what appeared to be his left calf early in his epic quarter-final against Felix Auger-Aliassime – and then ended up battling until almost 11pm at night to see off the Canadian.<\/p>\n

Age, time on court and the head-to-head are all in Sinner’s favour, but Djokovic won their last meeting at this stage of the Australian Open and cannot be counted out.<\/p>\n

Djokovic is also motivated as he chases more history – he is just two wins away from an outright record 25th Grand Slam singles title, breaking the tie with Margaret Court.<\/p>\n

The Serb benefited from a walkover and a mid-match retirement on his way to the last four in Melbourne, but goes into Friday’s meeting having won just one of his five Wimbledon matches in straight sets.<\/p>\n

“I still try to prove to myself and others that I’m able to compete with the best players in the world and beat them in the biggest stage,” Djokovic said.<\/p>\n

“That’s what I’ve done in Australia, it’s what I’ve done here.<\/p>\n

“Hopefully I can do it for a few more matches in London.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You wouldn’t normally expect a 39-year-old who had just spent five hours and 15 minutes on court to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-684346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}