ĐOKOVIĆ’S ROUTINE VICTORY: The Serb easily defeated his regular opponent, the Briton Norrie, and broke his own record along the way!

In a match full of ups and downs, Đoković had a great serving performance and reached the duel with Jan-Lennard Struff.

That’s what regular customers are for. For “trimming.” A slang term, of course, without any disrespect to Cameron Norrie, who for the seventh time in as many duels with Novak Đoković had to congratulate the best tennis player in the world of all time at the net. The third time in the current calendar year, this time for a place in the round of 16 of the U.S. Open – 6:4, 6:7, 6:2, 6:3. So, it was significantly harder than at the French Open, when Novak gave him a total of seven games, but it was a completely deserved victory, in two hours and 50 minutes of play, with our ace’s champion response to losing a set and a service game at the start of the third period of the match.

Precisely that detail, the most critical in the match, faithfully illustrates its course, full of ups and downs for the Serbian tennis player, who had health problems in the first set, a major game crisis at the end of the second, but he rose above all the troubles and in the end even very convincingly overcame the round in which he was eliminated in New York last year, all the more optimistic that he will take at least one more step, because his next opponent will be Jan-Lennard Struff, who made a big surprise by defeating the favored American Frances Tiafoe in three sets.

Novak had an incredible serving night. A score of 18 aces is his career record at the last Grand Slam of the season. This was especially true for the first set, in which Đoković did not lose a single point on his serve in the first three games, and when Norrie, whose first serve also worked great, in the third game of the second set, recorded his first ace in the match, the Serb already had a double-digit number. In the first set, Đoković had a hundred percent performance of points on his second serve; at the end of the match, an incredible 83 percent success rate on the first serve, and for the entire match, he only faced one break point!

Novak achieved the only break in the first set at 3:3, but the smiles on his fans’ faces were quickly replaced by anxiety, because in the ninth game, which he lost, in a bizarre way, by winning an attractive point at the net, he strained his back and immediately requested a medical time-out. Đoković went to the locker room with his physiotherapist, returned after a few minutes, served for the first set, but the problems remained for the next one.

And in it, as many as five double faults (including the last point for losing the set), as an indicator of how much that shot, which was the driving force behind Đoković’s victory in the third round of the New York Grand Slam, had stopped working – for statistics lovers, this was his 192nd Grand Slam victory on a hard court, with which he surpassed Roger Federer and, lo and behold, broke another record.

We were very close to seeing a repeat of the first set, because Nole had 0:40 and three consecutive break points at 3:3, but he did not use them; it went into an uncertain finish. Norrie raised the level of his game, had a winner ratio of 15:10 in this part of the match, and we watched a tie-break. Novak made the first mini-break, took a 3:1 lead, and then allowed his opponent to win five consecutive points, and there was no salvation.

When the left-handed Briton born in the Republic of South Africa won the first game in the third set, on Novak’s serve, and Đoković started to express nervousness more and more often in communication with the people from his box, the anxiety of his fans reached its peak, but that was precisely the moment when the GOAT “clicked” and when his champion instinct kicked in.

Đoković used the third break point for an express re-break, but that was actually the beginning of a series of four consecutive games. For an easy set win, and then three more consecutive games at the beginning of the fourth, when Norrie had already given up, and Novak’s game at certain moments took on an exhibition note.

This is Đoković’s 16th placement in the round of 16 in his last 17 appearances at the U.S. Open, and he is the oldest participant in the fourth round since Jimmy Connors in 1991. But, as he said with a laugh on the court right after the match, when asked about his health: “I’m not going to reveal those secrets to my future opponents, I’m stronger than ever and younger than ever!”

That’s exactly what we want to hear!