Top seed Novak Djokovic will face seventh seed Tomas Berdych on Friday in the Group A of the 2014 World Tour Finals at London.
The seven-time Grand Slam champion started out the tournament against this year’s Us Open champion Marin Cilic, and only lost two games en route to a 6-1, 6-1 victory. To get very close to booking a semifinal spot, Djokovic had to defeat third seed Stanislas Wawrinka in the second round. Although the Swiss got an early break, he started to play extremely bad after that, winning only one more game throughout the match.
With the 6-3, 6-0 victory, the Serbian pretty much sealed his semifinal spot. The Czech Berdych’s first opponent was the Swiss Wawrinka, who although led him 9-5 in the head to head department, was considered the underdog going into the match because he played rather erratic in the prior weeks.
This time however, the Swiss once again showed why he had the upper hand in that matchup, quickly defeating the Czech, only allowing him a grand total of two games throughout the match. To keep his hopes alive, the Czech had to defeat this year’s US Open champion, who actually defeated him in the quarterfinal, on the way to winning his maiden Grand Slam.
The Czech managed to avenge that loss, defeating the Croat 6-3, 6-1, essentially sealing Cilic’s fate. This will be the 19th encounter between the Serbian and the Czech and Djokovic currently leads the head to head 16-2.
That total domination is of course true when it comes to their hard court head to head as well, where Djokovic leads the Czech 14-0. Even though Serbian is already in the semifinal, and isn’t really pressured to defeat Berdych, he is of course the overwhelming favorite going into the match.