For a while, it seemed Tsonga might pull off the upset again. He started the match where he left off, hitting aggressive forehands, and getting an early break. But there’s a difference between Djokovic and Federer. Djokovic can return. Even with a late break to even up the match, the first set tiebreak could have gone to Tsonga. Djokovic won the first tiebreak 7 points to 4.
With that, Djokovic started feeling more confident with his groundstrokes forcing Tsonga to move around and unable to assert his forcing shots.
Djokovic took the second set, 6-2, and was up a break in the third set. He had worn a cap during most of the match, but late in the third set, he took it off, and Tsonga, being more motivated, played a great return game to break and get back on serve. Djokovic put the hat back on, and they eventually reached a tiebreak, which lasted to 11-9 as Tsonga thwarted match points by playing big.
Djokovic, however, broke early in the fourth set, and held that break to win the match and reach his first Wimbledon finals. The match was filled with theatrical dives from both players, including more than one point where both players landed on the ground.
Djokovic was only a handful of points behind Nadal when Wimbledon started. He was defending semifinal points from last year. By reaching the finals, he picks up a few hundred points, but Nadal, who is defending champ, can only maintain the same number of points or do worse. Thus, Djokovic becomes number 1 for the first time in his career, and the first player in quite a few years that has been number 1 not named Nadal or Federer.
NBC, of course, is using stone-age programming to forbid ESPN from covering the Murray-Nadal match live and is preventing streaming too, so it can show the match tape-delayed in every time zone throughout the US.
Brilliant.
EDIT: Looks like NBC decided to show the semi live in the East Coast of the US.
