As expected the rain arrived in New York on Thursday and that meant that the women’s semi-finals were postponed leaving us with a mouth watering ‘Fantastic Friday’ scheduled in the Big Apple with both the men and the women last four matches slated on Ashe on the same day.
The women will play their semi-finals in the afternoon in New York but the order they will be played has been flipped. Not before 5pm local time, 10pm UK time the men will get their turn when Novak Djokovic takes on the defending champion Marin Cilic before the two Swiss stars Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka close the epic day.
I’ve already covered the women’s semi-finals and there’s nothing that has happened since I did that preview that has changed my mind so I will leave those as they were and focus this preview purely on the men.
Most judges, pundits, experts and fans are fully expecting a Novak Djokovic vs Roger Federer final from here and it might well play out that we get that but rewind 12 months and everyone expected the same outcome and neither made the final!
On that occasion Novak Djokovic lost to Kei Nishikori and Federer was outgunned by Marin Cilic and those slip ups may well ensure the top two seeds take no liberties and don’t ease up in the semis this year so potentially that makes things tougher for Cilic and Wawrinka.
I can’t get a feel for the Swiss clash from a betting point of view. A year or two ago I’d have been all over Federer especially given how well he is playing but Stan clearly believes, and more importantly knows, he can beat his idol and that changes the dynamic of the match. That said Federer is playing awesome in this tournament and I’m on him outright so I’ll sit and watch that game.
I’m happy to take a bet in the other match though. If you looked purely at the head to head statistic between Djokovic and Cilic you’d take Djokovic without a second thought but although Djokovic leads 13-0 on the past meetings when they meet in Grand Slams the matches are usually quite tight.
They’ve met four times in Slams and three of those matches have gone at least four sets. Last year their Wimbledon quarter final went the distance. The only time they’ve not gone to four sets was at Wimbledon this year when Djokovic was at his very best.
The Serb doesn’t look at his best this week though. He has dropped a set to a limited Lopez and to Bautista-Agut before that and even Andreas Seppi served for a set against him so that should give Cilic plenty of hope here.
Cilic went 5 sets in his quarter final win over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga but he will have had three days to recover by the time he steps onto the court for this match so he should be fine physically. I’m not sure if he can or will beat the number one seed but I do think he’ll take a set off him. Cilic won’t want to give up his title easily so at odds against I very much like over 3.5 sets here.
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