Roland Garros<\/a> last four on Tuesday with a hard-fought 6-1, 5-7, 5-7, 7-6 (6), 6-1 win over no.5 seed Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in 4 hours and 10 minutes on Court Phillipe Chatrier.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe first set was one-sided. Novak won it convincingly in just 21 minutes.<\/p>\n
When he broke Tsonga to love with ease in the opening game of the second set and consolidated the break for 2-0 lead, it looked like he was in total control, but the home-crowd favourite made him work hard for the semi-final berth.<\/p>\n
Novak handed Tsonga a break point in the eighth game with an unforced error and the Frenchman broke back to equalise the result to 4-4. Tsonga broke again in the 12th game to level up the match at one-set all.<\/p>\n
Players exchanged breaks in the third set and then they both held until the 12th game. With the help of the French crowd Tsonga again made a crucial break to move 2-1 ahead.<\/p>\n
Nole had break point opportunities in the fifth and ninth games of the fourth set, but the 27-year-old Le Mans native got out of trouble with powerful serving. Djokovic showed his heart of a champion when he saved four match points serving to stay in the match. He then took the set winning a tie-breaker 8-6 to level up the match at two-sets all.<\/p>\n
The momentum was with Nole in the decisive fifth set. He made a double break and sealed the victory to keep his hopes for fourth straight major alive.<\/p>\n
“As a tennis player, this is what you live for,”<\/strong> said Djokovic. “This is what you practise for all these years, to be part of an incredible performance, incredible match. I’m really glad that I could win today.”<\/strong><\/p>\nSpeaking of his ability to fight off four match points, Nole said:\u00a0“It’s, I guess, trying to be mentally tough and believing in your shots. Obviously a little bit of experience that I had playing on this level for last five, six years. I did have some matches similar to this one when I was match points down and managing to come back.”<\/strong><\/p>\nNovak is now on a 26-match winning streak at the majors and 30-7 lifetime at Roland Garros.<\/p>\n
He will face third-seeded Roger Federer on Friday in attempt to reach his first French Open final. The Swiss rallied from 2 sets down to beat Juan Martin del Potro 3-6, 6-7, 6-2, 6-0, 6-3.<\/strong><\/p>\nIt will be their 26th career meeting, Roger leads 14-11. Novak won their last encounter in the semi-finals of\u00a0Rome Masters.<\/p>\n
Photo: Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Novak advanced into the Roland Garros last four with a hard-fought 6-1, 5-7, 5-7, 7-6 (6), 6-1 win over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in 4 hours and 10 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":30622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101010469,101011745,101012265],"class_list":["post-30632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-grand-slam-en-2","tag-quarterfinal","tag-roland-garros-2012-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30632","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=30632"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30770,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30632\/revisions\/30770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/RG_16.jpg\" "\\"Nole")
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