Novak Djokovic escaped at the end of the night from the trap set by Lorenzo Musetti (ATP 30) in the 3rd round at Roland-Garros. The world No. 1 concluded this game at 3:08 a.m. Sunday morning, after 4h29′ of fighting.
Holding the trophy, Novak Djokovic won 7-5 6-7 (6/8) 2-6 6-3 6-0 against the Italian. Trailing two sets to one at 1:45 a.m. in a game that had started after 10:30 p.m. the day before, he found who knows where the resources to get going again when there seemed to be no way out, after having gone through the third set like a ghost.
‘This is perhaps the most beautiful match I have played here,’ Novak Djokovic said in French, still on the court. ‘It’s impossible to sleep now with all this adrenaline. If you have a party, I’ll come,’ continued the Serbian, who will face Francisco Cerundolo (ATP 27) in the next round.
‘Who plays at two in the morning?’
‘There’s a certain beauty in winning the match at three in the morning, if it was the last one of the tournament, but that’s not the case… I’m going to have to recover as quickly as possible,’ he said. – he, however, nuanced this at a press conference. “Physically, I really pushed myself to my limits to win this match,” he said.
‘When you play rallies of more than twenty shots, at two in the morning…. Who plays at two in the morning?’, he asked. ‘The conditions were very heavy, it was very cold. You didn’t have many free points behind your serve. We had to work on each point,’ he further explained.
369 successes, like Federer
The weather conditions look more favorable for a second week in which Novak Djokovic will play big. The Serbian, who is aiming for a 25th major title, must at least reach the final – which would be his first of the year – to prevent Jannik Sinner from becoming the first world No. 1 in Italian tennis.
In the meantime, if he reaches the quarter-finals, Nole will become the sole holder of the record for matches won in Grand Slam tournaments. He has in fact equaled Roger Federer by reaching the round of 16, with a 369th victory obtained in a Major.
/ATS
