Unseeded Cecchinato stuns Djokovic to reach French semis

Unseeded Marco Cecchinato shocked the Roland Garros crowd by upsetting 12-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic in a stirring four-set victory Tuesday, beating the Serbian star 6-3, 7-6 (4), 1-6, 7-6 (11) in reaching the French Open semifinals.

The 25-year-old Cecchinato, the world 72nd-ranked ATP player who entered this tournament without a victory in any Grand Slam match in his career, toppled the former world No. 1 Djokovic thanks to surviving an arduous 22-minute tiebreak in the deciding fourth set.

Cecchinato becomes the first Italian man to reach a Grand Slam semifinal since 1978, when Corrado Barazzutti lost to Bjorn Borg at the French. Cecchinato is also the lowest-ranked French Open semifinalist since Andrei Medvedev (No. 100) in 1999.

When reassured in a post-match interview afterward that he wasn’t dreaming, Cecchinato laughingly replied, “Are you sure?”

“It’s amazing. It’s unbelievable for me. I’m very, very happy because for me it’s unbelievable to beat Novak Djokovic in [a] quarterfinal at Roland Garros,” Cecchinato continued.

Cecchinato jumped to an early lead Tuesday by mixing shots from the baseline with well-timed drops to throw off the 2016 French Open champion. Following the first set, Djokovic was treated on his neck and behind his right shoulder. The 31-year-old Serb battled back in the second set, but blew three set point chances with Cecchinato serving at 5-6 before dropping the tiebreak.

Down two sets to none, the 20th-seeded Djokovic stormed through the third before an exhilarating fourth set. Djokovic again seemed poised to take control, but the Italian broke Djokovic at 3-5 and fought back to send the set to a tiebreaker. Three times in the tiebreak Cecchinato fought off set points, then finally won on a backhand winner on his fourth match point.

“On the [final] tiebreaker I [had] maybe two or three match points before the last one, and … I don’t know [how I would have played in a fifth set], I was so tired. But I won the match and it was amazing.”

Cecchinato moves on to face No. 7 seed Dominic Thiem of Austria in the semifinals on Friday. The two have never faced each other, and neither has ever reached a Grand Slam final. Thiem defeated second-seeded German Alexander Zverev 6-4, 6-2, 6-1 earlier Tuesday to reach his third straight French semifinal.

Zverev is good friends with Thiem, and was playing through an injured left hamstring sustained in the first set. When asked after the match whether it was difficult to play against an injured friend, Thiem replied:

“It wasn’t difficult to stay focused. I mean, we were playing a quarterfinal of a Grand Slam, so the only thing I wanted to do was to win. It doesn’t matter how your opponent feels or who is standing there. I just wanted to finish the match in a positive way.”

Zverev said the injury happened in the fourth game of the first set.

“I slid one time, and then I felt, like, a muscle pull. I thought, ‘well, OK, I played a lot [three consecutive five-setters in the previous three rounds],'” Zverev said. “I thought maybe it’s just, like, soreness or something that would just go away.”

Zverev got his leg wrapped by a trainer down 4-1 in the second set but could not keep up with Thiem.

–Field Level Media