Did Jannik Sinner break the glass ceiling? The Italian will play his first Grand Slam semi-final at Wimbledon. Seeded N.8 in London, he disposed of Russian Roman Safiullin in the quarter-finals on Tuesday (6-4, 3-6, 6-2, 6-2).
Quarter-finalist at the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the US Open in 2022, Sinner will face the winner of the match between defending champion Novak Djokovic and another Russian, Andrey Rublev, for a place in the final.
He becomes, for the time being, at 22, the youngest semi-finalist on the London lawn since 2007 and a certain Novak Djokovic whom he could find in the half if the world number 2 beats the Russian Andrey Rublev.
But he will not remain so for long: the winner of the quarter between Carlos Alcaraz (N.1 in the world) and Holger Rune (N.6), both 20 years old, will become one in his place.
“I’ll stay young and happy anyway so at least let me enjoy it today,” he joked right after the game.
“It means a lot to me because we put in a lot of work, a lot, a lot of hours, including off the courts, a lot of sacrifices to get to this moment,” he commented more seriously.
The Italian has in any case shown a lot of maturity against Safiullin, one of the surprises of this edition since he had only one victory in the main draw in three tournaments on this surface before Wimbledon.
Sinner, extremely solid on his commitment, mastered the first set well where he broke at 4-4 to pocket it on his serve.
He also ideally started the second set by breaking away at 3-1, but with a percentage of first serves dropped to 48%, he lost the next 5 games to find himself at a set all.
“When I lost the second set, all I had to do was win the next two,” he said after the match, in the form of a joke.
“No, more seriously, it was obviously difficult. I faltered a bit mentally, it’s an area we work on a lot and I’m obviously very happy with the way I reacted in the last two sets, ”he added.
Again dominating on his serve — he only conceded a break point in the third and fourth sets — he used his greatest variety of shots to gain the upper hand over Safiullin who, although very combative, no longer made the weight.