Carlos Alcaraz clinched a place in the last four of Wimbledon on Wednesday for the first time, where he will find Daniil Medvedev, while in the women’s competition, Ons Jabeur took revenge for the 2022 final by beating Elena Rybakina and facing Aryna Sabalenka.
The noh 1 in the world had never shone on grass, although he is already a terror on clay and on hard courts. This year, he is also asserting his game on grass: with his title at Queen’s, Alcaraz won a tenth match in a row on this surface, beating Denmark’s Holger Rune in the quarter-finals (6e world) 7-6 (7/3), 6-4, 6-4.
“I was very nervous at the beginning, to play a quarter at Wimbledon, and in addition against Rune… But when you enter the court, there are no more friends. You have to be focused on yourself, and I think I’ve done that very well,” said the 20-year-old Spaniard, who had never made it past the knockout stages at Wimbledon.
He thus becomes the youngest player to reach the semi-finals of the London major since Novak Djokovic in 2007 (also 20 years old, but a few days younger: the Serb was born on May 22 and Alcaraz, on May 5).
“I play at a very good level. I did not expect to play so well on this surface. It’s crazy ! launched the winner of the last US Open.
The Medvedev Obstacle
He has already announced that he wants to play the title on Sunday against Novak Djokovic. To get there, he only has one obstacle left: the Russian Daniil Medvedev (3e), who also achieved the best Wimbledon of his career.
Having never previously passed the eighth, which he reached in 2021 before being banned from the tournament last year, the 27-year-old Russian bombarded his American opponent Christopher Eubanks (43e) of 52 winning strokes, including 28 aces (for only 13 unforced errors), to win 6-4, 1-6, 4-6, 7-6 (7/4), 6-1.
“After the first round, I would have liked to avoid a fifth, but, at the end of the third, I was hoping that we would play it”, joked Medvedev, who took 74 winning shots from his opponent, uninhibited when at 27, he played for the first time at Wimbledon. And that he had so far only reached the second round of a Grand Slam tournament twice (at the 2022 US Open and the 2023 Australian Open), without ever going further.
The men’s semi-finals, the second between Jannik Sinner (8e) and Novak Djokovic (2e), who hope to equal the all-time record of 24 Grand Slam titles, are both scheduled for Friday.
Jabeur’s revenge
Wednesday also decided the second semi-final of the women’s table: Ons Jabeur (6e) took revenge on the Kazakh Elena Rybakina (3e), who beat her in the final last year, and will face the noh 2, Aryna Sabalenka, to try to return to the final. The other half will oppose Elina Svitolina and Markéta Vondroušová. Both will be played on Thursday.
“If I could swap this match with last year’s…” said the 28-year-old Tunisian, after beating Rybakina 6-7 (5/7), 6-4, 6-1.
His first task was to tame the serve of the tall Kazakh (1.84m), who started this quarter with a record number of 342 aces since the start of the season, including 26 at Wimbledon in four games. Since losing the very first set of the tournament, Rybakina had never seen his serve broken again and had only had to defend seven break points.
Jabeur shattered these statistics by taking his serve five times and allowing himself a total of nine break points.
The match against Sabalenka, who clearly dominated the American Madison Keys (18e) 6-2, 6-4 looks much the same as the Australian Open winner Belarus also relies on a big serve and power play.