Novak Djokovic has set a new all-time record for most Wimbledon matches won by a male player after beating Russia’s Roman Safiullin on Sunday.
The seventh seed battled his way to a 7-6(6), 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 victory on Centre Court to clinch his 106th win at the Grand Slam, moving him ahead of Roger Federer on the all-time list. It is the ninth time in a row Djokovic has reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon and the 17th time overall. Taking into account all four major events, he has now reached the last eight on 66 occasions.
Besides Djokovic’s history-making milestone, Safiullin also produced an admirable performance for a player who was forced to end his season early last year due to injury and hadn’t won any Tour-level matches until Wimbledon. Although he was unable to stop Djokovic in his quest for a 25th Grand Slam title.
“Another hard fought win. Roman started very well I knew it was going to be a challenge staying in the rally with him,” Djokovic said during his on-court interview.
“He’s had some great wins this week. He should be proud of the performance he had today.”
The seven-time champion was tested from the outset by qualifier Safiullin, who reached the quarter-finals at SW19 on his debut in 2022 and produced a clinical win over Joao Fonseca in the previous round. On his back foot, Djokovic fell behind 2-5 and faced two set points in the following game. However, he managed to claw his way back to level before forcing proceedings into a tightly contested opening tiebreak. At this stage, it was Djokovic’s turn to have a duo of set point chances come and go before he held his nerve to prevail on his third attempt after 62 minutes of play.
Heading into the second frame, Djokovic began to tighten the screw halfway through by breaking. This gave him enough of a margin to seal a two-set lead with relative ease, regardless of the best attempts of his rival.
Despite being in a winning situation, Djokovic’s frustration surfaced throughout the third frame when he received a code violation for an obscenity warning for swearing loudly in Serbian after going down 0-2. A couple of games later, he blasted the ball out of anger after breaking back before dropping his serve yet again. Although he wasn’t issued a warning for the second outburst.
It was an at times patchy display from Djokovic, who closed the match out after three-and-a-half hours. Illustrated by his unforced error count of 37 which was almost the same as his winner count of 43.
“Today it was one of those days where I didn’t want to stay in the rally for too long. So I had to mix things up,” Djokovic said of his decision to serve and volley multiple times.
“Survive to thrive. That’s how I feel. So hopefully the thriving part is coming.”
Djokovic is the third man in the Open Era to reach the quarterfinals at Wimbledon after turning 39. Following in the footsteps of Ken Rosewall and Federer.
