Top two seeds show their quality to reach Wimbledon men’s final

Two Wimbledon finalists in Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev advanced to Sunday’s main event in straight sets, having faced two opponents from entirely opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of Grand Slam experience.

Who better to provide an accurate scouting report of the two remaining contenders to become this year’s Wimbledon champion than the players they defeated on Friday, Novak Djokovic – the one with lots of experience given his 24 Grand Slam titles, in case you were wondering – and British wildcard Arthur Fery.

Djokovic, swiftly into his post-match press conference, insisted that this was not the end and that he would like another crack at title number eight on Centre Court next year, when he will be 40. The only issue being that to achieve that feat, he will probably have to find a way through Sinner, his conqueror now at the semi-final stage two years in a row. 

In the 2025 edition, Djokovic was badly hobbled after a significant fall in his quarter-final win. Here he reported a clean bill of health, merely having to deal with the after-effects of Tuesday’s five-hour 15-minute epic against Félix Auger-Aliassime. 

Watching Sinner and Djokovic duel it out in their matching white caps was initially a bit like witnessing two programmed tennis robots striking the ball perfectly to each other during long rallies, both reaching and dispatching returns that mere humans would not even dream of attempting. That is until the older, slightly noisier robot began to creak. 

A smiling Djokovic afterwards described the 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 match as “a good old blowout”, which feels a bit harsh on himself, although given the athleticism and accuracy Sinner produced, every time the world number one found the break of serve, you questioned whether even the great Djokovic could respond.

The work that has gone into Sinner’s serve, Djokovic acknowledged, has been hugely beneficial for the Italian. “Very difficult to read his serve. What an incredible weapon that has become in the last couple years since he changed his technique,” Djokovic said, after Sinner rattled off 16 aces. Pair that with his ability from the back of the court, his composure and his record here at SW19 - this was Sinner’s third semi-final in four years - and Sinner is the obvious favourite on Sunday. His wobble in the first round, taken to five sets by Miomir Kecmanović, seems like a lifetime ago.

Sinner’s serve might be hard to read, but Zverev’s is simply enormous, booming down first serves with such ferocity that Fery at times did well to get near them.

The way that the air went out of Centre Court following Zverev’s dominant first-set tie-break, 7-0 following a competitive first set, meant that you knew where the match was headed. The crowd did too. 

Zverev went out of his way afterwards to praise how fair they had been, given their understandably high hopes for their new homegrown hero. There were also notably no heckles here towards Zverev over the past allegations against him of domestic abuse, as was the case on two occasions last year in Melbourne and Munich.

There was a quiet murmur as the dust settled on the first set as it dawned on the crowd that this might be a leap too far even for the resilient Fery, who had overcome five-set battles against Zizou Bergs and Grigor Dimitrov to get to this stage.

Maybe Fery also knew. He has scrapped with huge heart throughout the fortnight of his dreams, the local boy who became a winner on Centre Court playing in front of Roger Federer earlier this week. Spotting the eight-time Wimbledon winner watching you play from the Royal Box must be akin to an out-of-body experience if you grew up idolising him over the past two decades.

The manner of Fery’s straight-sets defeat to the French Open winner should not tarnish what has been a most welcome surprise for British tennis. Fery has cracked the world’s top 40 and is a Grand Slam semi-finalist, which is an awful lot better than how other British prospects have fared here. And yet Fery must have known in the aftermath of that tie-break that, try as he might, he could not live with Zverev’s power. 

Returns required maximum effort, with Zverev getting up to 139mph on his first serve (impressively, that was one that Fery actually managed to get back). Even if Fery found a return, Zverev usually had a bludgeon of a forehand locked and loaded. Overall Zverev hit 44 winners (to Fery’s 16) and by the end was winning 77% of his points on first serve. Good luck against that. 

Fery noted afterwards that he had not felt “as comfortable and at ease”. The ferocity of Zverev’s forehand meant that he never had a chance to settle, with the balls “coming back a little bit faster than the other days and what I’m used to”. 

When Zverev was more inaccurate in the opening set, the door was left open for Fery to apply pressure, breaking back from 1-3 down to take Zverev to that eventual first-set tie-break. With each set, the unforced error count from the German dropped from 18 to nine to just four, the kind of ruthlessness befitting a Grand Slam champion, who is now sitting on the cusp of possibly winning two in a row after his success in Paris against Flavio Cobolli. Sinner in his press conference recognised the new confidence that Zverev was playing with as a result of that maiden success. 

“When you finally achieve it, it’s amazing and then [it] gives you this confidence boost. We see it again here,” Sinner said. “We saw how aggressive he’s playing, serving very big. He is a tough player to play against. He was before, but now even more because of this confidence he has.”

Expect aces and short points and big winners, Zverev’s power against the elasticity of Sinner. Fery and Djokovic could not live with either of them and, really, there is no shame in that. Djokovic wants to come back. Perhaps Fery will too. “I really think he is going to do amazing things in this sport,” said Zverev, kindly. The top two seeds will meet in the final. And watching both of their matches, neither was ever in doubt.

Photographs by Daniel Kopatsch/Getty;Visionhaus/Getty