We found out the competitors in the women’s final at Wimbledon on Thursday and on Friday we will determine the two men who will battle it out in the men’s finale when the two semi-finals are played on Centre Court at SW19.
We have three of the best players in the world on show in the two semi-finals and a dangerous outsider who has been in a good run on form in London over the last month so we should be in for a great day of tennis.
Daniil Medvedev vs Carlos Alcaraz
The opening semi-final of the competition will be a repeat of a match from the last four a year ago as Daniil Medvedev looks to gain revenge on the defending champion Carlos Alcaraz after the Spaniard took the Russian down in straight sets 12 months ago.
Medvedev is having to do it the hard way in this tournament. He took care of the number one seed in the quarter final in Jannik Sinner and now he has to get the better of the defending champion and to win the title he might have to take care of the best of the lot. Before he can think about the final though, he has to come up with a much better gameplan than he had a year ago where he surrendered too much court on the return and Alcaraz picked him off at will. The question is whether Alcaraz is in the same touch that he was in a year ago. I don’t think the answer is yes but he is a big time performer on the biggest stage of the lot here. We saw against Sinner on Tuesday that Medvedev shouldn’t be written off lightly so I’m not going to do that. I think this match will be much closer than last year but that blowout does restrict me from getting involved in overs in games or sets and things. I’ll take a watching brief for this contest rather than a betting one.
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Lorenzo Musetti vs Novak Djokovic
The second semi-final will see the Queens finalist Lorenzo Musetti going up against the multiple time champion of this tournament in Novak Djokovic in what looks like a bit of a mismatch according to the odds but their history suggests it could be different.
While Djokovic leads 5-1 in the overall head-to-head, in two of the wins he was 2-0 down in sets to the Italian and 2-1 down in sets. Both of those were at Roland Garros and he recovered to save the day but I wouldn’t be completely surprised if Musetti has some joy here. Of course, it is not to the advantage of the Italian that Djokovic had the quarter final off after Alex de Minaur withdrew, but while Musetti needed five sets to see off Taylor Fritz in the last eight, it wasn’t an extended battle so he should be fresh enough to give this one a right good go. We saw at Queens that Musetti is very comfortable on grass, much more so than Holger Rune, so there is every reason to believe that Djokovic, who might have brought some serious grief onto himself from the crowd after his bizarre reaction at the end of his match with the Dane, will face his toughest test of the fortnight here. When you consider Jacob Fearnley and Alexei Popyrin both took a set off the Serbian, there is every reason to believe that Musetti can make this competitive for certain periods of the contest even if the ultimate upset is beyond him. The Italian showed in both meetings in the French Open that he isn’t scared of Djokovic and I fancy this one to go to four sets at the very least.
Tips
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