Paris Olympics<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Serbian star produced a high-quality display on Court Philippe Chatrier, the same stadium where he won Roland Garros in 2016, 2021 and 2023.<\/p>\n
The Belgrade native earned a decisive break at 5-4 in the first set to grab a lead. The two had traded breaks twice in the second set, before Novak found his rhythm and broke twice more to seal the win.<\/p>\n
Djokovic is guaranteed career-best Olympic result. His previous best Olympics result was a bronze medal at the 2008 Beijing games.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been waiting for this for almost 20 years,\u201d<\/strong> Nole said. \u201cI\u2019ve played four Olympic games, this is my fifth and I\u2019ve never passed semi-finals. I lost three semi-finals in my first four Olympic games. I managed to overcome this big hurdle. I must be honest and say that I was thinking about all the semi-finals that I lost. I played against a player who is in great form and really came out firing from both ends. I just tried to maintain the focus and do what I have to do.”<\/strong><\/p>\n“This dream is long lived and fought for. I wanted to compete in the finals of Olympic games for such a long time. Representing my country at a global event is a huge privilege and honor that I cherish. Serbia will have a medal on Sunday!”<\/strong><\/p>\nMatch statistics: aces (3-0), double faults (1-2), winners (18-12), unforced errors (23-27), total points won (68-52).<\/p>\n
Novak will clash against Carlos Alcaraz in Sunday’s showdown for gold.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Spaniard raced past Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime 6-1, 6-1.<\/p>\n
Photo: Profimedia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak advanced to his first ever gold medal match at the Paris Olympics on Friday, following a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Italian Lorenzo Musetti in the semi-final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":167775,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012251,101013330,101012216,101010574,101013409,101013410,101010433],"class_list":["post-167780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-france-en","tag-lorenzo-musetti","tag-medal","tag-olympic-games-en","tag-paris-2024-olympics-en","tag-paris-olympics-en","tag-semifinal-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167780"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167789,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167780\/revisions\/167789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}