World number one Novak Djokovic has registered his spot in the Australian Open semifinals with a 6-7(6), 6-1, 6-4, 7-6(6) victory over sixth seed Alexander Zverev.
It was the German who came out firing, breaking Djokovic in the opening game and holding to go 2-0 up. Zverev carried the break through the first set, before Djokovic broke him at 4-5, eventually forcing a tiebreaker. The sixth seed still managed to claim the tiebreaker, and looked well on top on the world number one.
However, Djokovic managed to get himself back into the contest, hitting just five unforced errors in the second set to claim it 6-2.
Zverev responded well, racing away to a 4-1 lead in the third. The German wasn't able to take advantage of his lead though, missing forehands, double faulting and getting tangled in long exchanges - ultimately allowing Djokovic to reel off five games in a row to take a two sets to one advantage.
Once again, the German put on display his resilience, firing away to a 3-0 lead in the fourth set. But that resilience was short lived. Djokovic managed to break back and save a set point to eventually force a tiebreaker, which he won 8-6.
Djokovic came into the match with the injury cloud that has hung over his head all tournament and admitted he hasn't trained on his days off in preparation for his matches: "I've been doing various things to put myself in a condition to play. I haven't been practicing in the days off. I'm going to keep doing the same and hopefully the result will be in the end the same like it was today."
"There was a lot of keys, a lot of turnarounds today. It's hard to pick one moment in the match where I feel like things have shifted, because it was really anybody's game. It was really a roller coaster of a match in every sense of that word," Djokovic said.
"You know, I didn't start well. It took me time to really warm up and start to feel better in terms of movement, rotation, in terms of hitting.
Towards the end of the first I start to feel better on the court, and then I also played better. It was just a tough match. I mean, I feel really exhausted. It was a great battle. We took each other, pushed each other to the limit. And kind of walking into this match today, I knew that's going to be probably the toughest match I have so far in the tournament, and it was like that. Until the last serve, it was really anybody's game," Djokovic said.
The eight time Australian Open champion set up a semifinal clash with Russian qualifier Aslan Karatsev, who he admitted he hadn't seen play before the tournament: "To be honest I haven't seen him play at all before the Australian Open. Of course I've seen him play during the Australian Open, I've seen him play today, I've seen him play the last match. Very strong guy physically, very strong, moves well, just has a lot of fire from the back of the court, he serves well, he's motivated, he has nothing to lose," Djokovic said.
Djokovic didn't leave his on court interview following the match with Jim Courier without a comment on the fourteen day quarantine leading into the event: "There's too many injuries. Honestly, I'm just hoping that this is all temporary so we can go back to what we're used to without interruptions of practice and the fourteen day quarantine. People don't realise but I think the amount of injuries during this tournament has shown how much effect it's had on players bodies. It's taken its toll unfortunately on all of us," Djokovic stated.