Defending champion Novak Djokovic overcame some hurdles to defeat Alexander Zverev 6-7(6), 6-2, 6-4, 7-6(6) and seal his spot in the Australian Open semi-finals on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The world number one hit back strongly after losing a tight opening set on a tiebreak but initially trailed in the third and fourth set before making a comeback.<\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s Zverev will regret allowing Djokovic back from 4-1 down in the third set and 3-0 in the fourth.<\/p>\n
The Serbian again wore a tape on his abdominal area, due to the injury that took place in the third-round against Taylor Fritz. But it did not appear to bother him as he reached his 39th Grand Slam semi-final.<\/p>\n
He will be facing an unlikely opponent, Russian qualifier Aslan Karatsev, who won against Grigor Dimitrov earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
Zverev began confidently and secured the first break of the match but failed to convert a set point on Djokovic\u2019s serve when leading 5-3.<\/p>\n
However, he faltered on his serve at 5-4 and Djokovic took the set into a tiebreaker for Zverev to finally win a 59-minute set.<\/p>\n
The Serb succeed in winning the second set in just 29 minutes but his level dropped at the start of the third.<\/p>\n
When Zverev was ahead 0-30, Djokovic found another gear and went on to win 20 out of the next 24 points to move one set away from victory.<\/p>\n
The game saw another momentum shift as Zverev took a 3-0 lead in the fourth set and have three points to move to 4-0 lead. But Djokovic put his best foot forward to bring himself back into contention.<\/p>\n
The decider was crucial as Djokovic saved a set point at 5-6 and wrapped up the match with his 23rd ace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Defending champion Novak Djokovic overcame some hurdles to defeat Alexander Zverev 6-7(6), 6-2, 6-4, 7-6(6) and seal his spot in\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":37775,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1466,1465,689,1421,1464,203,202],"class_list":["post-17027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-alexander-zverev","tag-aslan-karatsev","tag-australian-open","tag-grand-slam","tag-grigor-dimitrov","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-tennis"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}