Roar Guru
It’s the men’s semi-finals tonight at Wimbledon, with the first being an intriguing, explosive and unexpected match-up between the attack of Juan Martin del Potro and the stoically brilliant defence of World No. 1 Novak Djokovic. Join The Roar for live scores and blog from 10.00pm AEST.
Wimbledon 2013 has been a bloodbath for the highly fancied seeds, tennis’ version of Game of Thrones were kings and queens of the court were cut down quicker than you could say ‘I hate Joffrey Baratheon’.
But through the carnage has emerged the world number 1 Djokovic (along with fellow big four member Andy Murray) to take his place in the Semis.
The Djoker is no such thing.
He is the current king and has been vanquishing his opponents with the ruthlessness of a potential champion.
Ominously Djokovic has yet to drop a set and has stated he is feeling more physically fit than ever before come this end of a Grand Slam.
So ordinarily with a lower seeded semi opponent and being in such superlative form one would be forgiven for already marking Djokovic down for a finals birth.
But not so fast.
His opponent, del Potro, is not only a former major winner himself (the 2009 US Open) he has already beaten the World No. 1 twice this year (at Indian Wells and in Davis Cup).
His big game and heavy hitting has tested Djokovic’s counter attacking style like few others.
Interestingly they have only played on grass once, which was at Wimbledon but in the 2012 Olympics. Del Potro won that contest so his confidence will be high going into this rematch.
Del Potro has often been considered a great one who has never fully lived up to his potential, a sort of present day Marat Safin.
Here he gets the opportunity to start living up to the hype by taking on the current king of the courts.
Prediction: Djokovic in four.