Staff Reporter.
Novak Djokovic saw off 11th seed Alex de Minaur in four sets, losing the first in short order in a shocking episode, before fighting back to eliminate the Aussie.
Djokovic, 38, also played down injury concerns despite clutching his stomach throughout, having suffered with a stomach issue in round one.
With men’s record eight-time winner Roger Federer watching on from the Royal Box, Djokovic lost an error-strewn opener and had to fight back from 4-1 down in the fourth set to win 1-6 6-4 6-4 6-4.
Djokovic said of playing in front of Federer: “This is probably the first time he is watching me and I have won the match!
“The last couple of times I lost, so it’s good to break the curse.
“Roger is a huge champion and someone I admired and respected a lot.
“We shared the stage for many years and it is great to have him back at his most successful and favourite tournament.”
In addition to chasing Federer’s Wimbledon record, Djokovic is attempting to win a standalone record 25th Grand Slam title.
He will face Italian 22nd seed Flavio Cobolli for a semi-final place, with world number one Jannik Sinner potentially waiting in the last four.
Meanwhile Wimbledon has made changes to its electronic line calling system to remove the possibility of “human error” after it was accidentally deactivated in a controversial episode on Sunday.
An “operator error” meant the ball-tracking technology was turned off for one game in the fourth-round match between Britain’s Sonay Kartal and Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Centre Court.
“Following our review, we have now removed the ability for Hawk-Eye operators to manually deactivate the ball tracking,” the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) said in a statement.
“While the source of the issue was human error, this error cannot now be repeated due to the system changes we have made.”
Compiled by Lehlohonolo Lehana.