Novak Djokovic's dream of completing a career Grand Slam is still alive thanks to a titanic victory in five sets over two days against Andy Murray in the French Open semi-finals.
The top seed at Roland Garros will face Stanislas Wawrinka in tomorrow's final after the Swiss ended home favourite Jo Wilfried-Tsonga's run in Paris yesterday.
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Djokovic and Murray, the first and third seeds respectively, didn't take long to get into the their strides when the match started on Friday afternoon, immediately trading hefty blow after hefty blow in pendulum-like exchanges.
Murray was the first to offer a break-point chance at 3-2 down, but he saved it to get back on level terms. However, that would be his last game of the first set as Djokovic reeled off three in a row to claim in 6-3.
The Serbian was again the aggressor in the second, not offering Murray a single break point and converting two of his own to come through 6-3 once more and open up a two-set advantage.
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As in the first set, Murray prevented Djokovic breaking in the sixth game of the third, but still he wasn't troubling the top seed's serve as a tie-break loomed.
However, in Djokovic's last service game of the set, Murray went 15-40 up and converted his first break point of the match before serving out the set to love with some inspired tennis that had the Parisian crowd fully on his side.
The momentum was with the Scot and he broke first in the fourth to go 2-1 in front, but Djokovic hit straight back and the set was level at 3-3 when officials on Court Philippe Chatrier decided that it was best to suspend the gripping encounter because of an imminent storm and the dwindling light.
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Upon the resumption at lunchtime today, the duo looked supreme on serve as they traded four comfortable holds before Murray broke the mould with a break to go 6-5 in front.
He held his nerve after the change of ends, serving the set out to 30 and sending the encounter into a deciding fifth set.
Murray took Djokovic to deuce in the opening game, but couldn't force a break-point opportunity and in the next game the Scot was broken.
From that point on, Djokovic was rarely in trouble and broke Murray once more before serving out the final set 6-1 in anti-climactic fashion.
Murray suffers defeat for the first time on clay this year since he got married and has now failed to beat Djokovic in eight meetings since the 2013 Wimbledon final.
Pascal Lemesre
