Tennis: Djokovic beats Murray in five-set thriller

Jan 27, 2012 |

Melbourne

Tags:

Defending champion Novak Djokovic was forced to dig deep on Friday to see off Britain's Andy Murray in a thrilling five-set semi-final at the Australian Open.

In rollercoaster match lasting nearly five hours the Serbian top seed, trailing two sets to one, stormed back to win 6-3, 3-6, 6-7 (4/7), 6-1, 7-5 to set up a final with Rafael Nadal.

Djokovic, who enjoyed a stellar season in 2011, winning 10 titles including the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the US Open, drew first blood on Rod Laver Arena, breaking in the fourth game when the Scot double-faulted.

He took the opening set and broke again early in the second but Murray cut out the errors and began to dicate the points, levelling the match and taking the third set on a tie-break.

But there was a sudden momentum shift at the start of the fourth set as errors crept back into Murray's game and Djokovic raced through the gears to seal it 6-1 in just 25 minutes.

He made a crucial break in the sixth game of the final set and although Murray broke back, he won the match by breaking the Scot in the 12th game.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/122303" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-3089a00aec4c0df1211ae9b08fe00098" value="form-3089a00aec4c0df1211ae9b08fe00098" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80649709" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>