Novak Djokovic beat Roman Safiullin in four sets on Sunday to reach the Wimbledon quarterfinals and move past Roger Federer for the most men's singles wins at the All England Club. The result was 7-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, and it sent Djokovic into his ninth straight Wimbledon quarterfinal.
That is the kind of win that explains why Djokovic is still being tracked so closely at Wimbledon. He is a seven-time champion there and a 24-time Grand Slam winner, but this match added something new to the ledger: more men's singles wins at the All England Club than any other player. On a day when the bracket started to tighten, Djokovic also made clear he is still the one everyone else has to catch.
Safiullin made him work for it. The match opened with the qualifier from Roman Safiullin in earning a pair of service breaks and building a 5-2 lead, forcing Djokovic to save two set-point chances before edging the first-set tiebreaker 8-6. Djokovic then tightened the screws in the second set, losing only five total points on serve and breaking in the sixth game before Safiullin answered by taking the third set.
That mattered because Safiullin was not supposed to be here without a fight. Before Sunday, he had come through qualifiers to reach the main draw, then survived five-set matches against Andrey Rublev and Botic van de Zandschulp. By the time he stood across the net from Djokovic, he had already spent enough time on court to make this feel less like a routine early-round test and more like a match that could drag deeper than expected.
It did not break that way, but it did not break cleanly, either. Djokovic closed in the fourth set and left Safiullin with the kind of loss that still carried proof of how hard he had pushed a champion who rarely gives ground. The next question is the one the draw has now turned toward: Djokovic will play either Felix Auger-Aliassime or Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in the quarterfinals, and the path ahead already looks more dangerous than the one he just cleared.
