PARIS—The fourth-round match between Novak Djokovic and Andreas Seppi in Court Philippe Chatrier didn’t start out like it was going to go four and a half (seemingly interminable) hours. Djokovic, who was 7-0 against Seppi coming in, appeared to be sharp and in good spirits for the first three games, while the Italian was coming off two five setters in his last two matches. When the Serb broke the Italian with a nice running backhand slice pass in the second game, it appeared he was in for a quick afternoon.
Then Djokovic netted an easy forehand to make the score 3-1. He smothered two more to be broken for 3-2. By the next game, the poor form had migrated to his backhand. At break point, he put a second serve return from that wing feebly into the net. On a second break point, he did the same with an easy forehand. As the misses piled up, so did Djokovic’s uncertainty. After each one, he dropped his head straight down. A pattern had been set that would last the entire match: Djokovic would build a lead in a game, get tentative, and miss a shot that he’s been making in his sleep for the last 16 months. Soon he was struggling with his footing (as he had in his last match on Chatrier), with the wind, and with his timing on his forehand side. The quality of this 4-6, 6-7 (5), 6-3, 7-5, 6-3 win for Djokovic can be summed up with three statistics: Djokovic was nine for 22 on break points, and he hit 45 winners and committed 77 unforced errors. But Seppi, with 43 winners and 81 errors, was worse.
Not that this was a poor performance from the Italian by any means. You don’t get up two sets on the world’s best player without doing a lot of things right. Seppi, now ranked No. 22, has been on something of a roll since winning a title on Djokovic’s turf a few weeks ago in Belgrade. His forehand in particular, always a weak link, is much improved. While he’s never had much power, he was the one, rather than Djokovic, who came up with the clutch winners early. At 5-4 and deuce in the first set, he clubbed a backhand down the line that took him to set point. And even after getting broken while serving for the second set, Seppi held his nerve in the subsequent tiebreaker, winning it with a single mini-break at 6-5. For much of the match, Seppi was the player with the more penetrating backhand, the one taking the initiative in rallies.
It seemed like one of those matches where the better player would need just one breakthrough to loosen up and take over. At the start of the third, it appeared that Seppi had given him that chance when he threw in a couple of errors and was broken. For the next two games, Djokovic finally relaxed and played something like his normal self. But in a measure of how difficult his day was, the good play didn’t last. By the fourth set, Djokovic was back to playing defensively, squandering break chances, and just trying to survive.
Which he did. Next up for the top seed is a quarterfinal against the winner of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Stan Wawrinka. Djokovic will need to play better and more aggressively the rest of the way—and he might consider a different pair of shoes for this court. Today, though, when his last swing volley touched down and he had finally won, Djokovic did little more than breathe a giant sigh of relief. He knew this hadn’t been a day of triumph, but a day of escape.
