Novak Djokovic is finding a higher gear in South Florida after a sluggish start to 2025.
\nDjokovic, gunning for his seventh Miami Open title, dispatched American Sebastian Korda 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) Thursday in one hour, 24 minutes in a quarterfinal match that was postponed from Wednesday night because the women\u2019s quarterfinal between Jessica Pegula and Emma Raducanu ran past 11 p.m. and would have begun at about midnight \u2014 against new ATP rules.
\nDjokovic advanced to Friday\u2019s semifinals and will face Bulgaria\u2019s Grigor Dimitrov. Djokovic is 12-1 against the 33-year-old Dimitrov, who reached the tournament finals in 2024.
\nDjokovic, who won all six of his titles at the tournament\u2019s previous venue at Key Biscayne, is going for his 100th professional title.
\n\u201cI\u2019m getting great support,\u201d The Associated Press quoted Djokovic as saying. \u201cI feel I have a really good chance to go all the way here. …I\u2019m playing the best I have in some time.\u201d
\nWith the Hard Rock Stadium fans cheering the 37-year-old and chanting his name, Djokovic rallied in the second set from 4-1 and 5-2 down to win in a tiebreaker.
\nHe served an ace on match point and finished with an 83 first-service percentage against the 24th-seeded Korda. The 37-year-old Serbian let out a yell after the victory and strummed his racket like a violin.
\n\u201cOne word \u2014 serve,” Djokovic said when asked the key to his second-set surge. \u201cI was serving very well \u2014 best serving performance in a long time.\u201d
\nThe men\u2019s leader in Grand Slam titles at 24 has been out of form this year, starting with an injury retirement at the Australian Open in January. Earlier this month, Djokovic lost his first match at Indian Wells to Botic van de Zandschulp.
\nSaturday\u2019s women\u2019s final is set with No. 3 Jessica Pegula facing top seed Aryna Sabalenka. It is also a rematch of the 2024 US Open final, won by Sabalenka.
\nIn the women\u2019s semifinal staged late Thursday, Pegula had to be spectacularly resilient to stop the history-making run of the 19-year-old lefty from the Philippines, Alexandra Eala.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Novak Djokovic is finding a higher gear in South Florida after a sluggish start to 2025. Djokovic, gunning for his seventh Miami Open title, dispatched American Sebastian Korda 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) Thursday in one hour, 24 minutes in a quarterfinal match that was postponed from Wednesday night because the women\u2019s quarterfinal between Jessica Pegula and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45454,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45453\/revisions\/45454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}