Sinner takes advantage of favourable draw to complete unique statistic en route to Djokovic semi-final at Wimbledon

ATP
Thursday, 13 July 2023 at 19:00
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Jannik Sinner reaches Wimbledon semifinals without facing any top-70 player and will face Novak Djokovic.
The young Italian had a fortunate draw where the seeded players fell before facing him, simplifying his path through the tournament. In the five matches Sinner played in this tournament, he faced Juan Manuel Cerundolo (111th), Diego Schwartzman (98th), Quentin Halys (79th), Daniel Elahi Galan (85th), and Roman Safiulin (92nd).
Sinner entered as the 8th seed, and the first seeded player in his path was Daniel Evans, but Evans lost to Halys in the first round. Later in the draw, he could have faced the 24th seed Yoshito Nishioka or the 9th seed Taylor Fritz.
Others he could have faced in the quarterfinals include the 13th seed Borna Coric, 20th seed Roberto Bautista Agut, 4th seed Casper Ruud, or the 26th seed Denis Shapovalov, who reached the fourth round but was eliminated by Safiulin.
With this, Sinner becomes the first player to reach the Wimbledon semifinals without facing any top-70 player. This has been seen in other Grand Slam tournaments, such as Jimmy Connors in 1973-1974 and Ken Rosewall in 1975-1976, all at the Australian Open. It was also repeated simultaneously in 1977 with Vitas Gerulaitis and John Lloyd, and in 1982 with Johan Kriek and Paul McNamee.
The most recent cases were Ivan Ljubicic in the 2006 French Open and Rafael Nadal in 2020, a tournament where Nadal coincidentally played against Sinner (then world No. 74) in the quarterfinals, with Nadal winning 7-6, 6-4, 6-1.
Despite Sinner's impressive tournament so far, he will face a much more challenging match on Friday, as he goes up against the 7-time Wimbledon champion and four-time defending champion Novak Djokovic, who will be seeking to reclaim the world No. 1 ranking and equal Roger Federer's record of eight Wimbledon titles.

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