Paris, June 12, LETA. Novak Djokovic, the planet’s first racket in men’s tennis, defeated Raphael Nadal, known as the “king of clay”, in a semi-final of the French Open in Friday in a match between two tennis giants.
The Serbian tennis player won the Spanish in the third position with the result 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7: 4), 6-2 and secured a place in the final, which will be faced by the Greek Stefan Cicip on Sunday.
The game ended after 11 pm, when restrictions were in force in France, but with the permission of the authorities, the fans gathered in the stands to watch the intense and athletic fight of both tennis players to the end.
Djokovic was 0-5 in the first set, but he played and later Nadal won only 6-3 with the seventh set ball. If the first two sets lasted about an hour each, then the third set turned out to be very heavy for both tennis players, in which Djokovic was superior in a 98-minute fight, the Serb playing one set ball and gaining the upper hand only in Taiwan.
Djokovic started the fourth set with a lost serve, but after the second game he beat Nadal three times and won 6-2, which gave him a place in the final.
The two tennis players met face to face for the 58th time in their careers, but Nadal had a much better balance on the clay before Friday’s match – 19 wins and seven losses, winning seven of eight fights in Paris. Nadal also has an excellent balance at the French Open, where he has won 105 of 108 dells in 16 years. Their French Open has been won only twice by Djokovic and once by Robin Sederling.
Djokovic Nadal has not won on the clay surface since the 2016 Rome tournament.
Nadal has won 13 of his 20 Grand Slam titles in the French Open. Djokovic, on the other hand, has won only once in Paris and has less than two Grand Slam titles in his account.
Meanwhile, the fifth racket of the planet Cicips also in a heavy duel in the semi-final with the result 6-3, 6-4, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3 beat the sixth number of the ranking Alexander Zverev.
Cicips will be the first Greek tennis player to play in the Grand Slam final.
Zverev played after the first two losing sets and in the fifth set at the result 2-5 did not allow the opponent to realize four match balls. However, in the next game, Cicips put an end to a three-hour, 40-minute fight.
Cicips played in his third Grand Slam semi-final. In the previous two – yesterday in Australia and last year in France – he lost to Nadal and Djokovic respectively.
Cicipa’s 22-year-old mother Jūlija Salņikova (now Apostoli) used to play professional tennis. In the eighties, together with Ģirts Dzelda, she won the USSR championship mixed doubles, but together with Agnes Gustmanis she won one ITF doubles title.
The season’s second Grand Slam tournament, the French Open, will run until Sunday.
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