Jannik Sinner moved into the Wimbledon semi-finals on Wednesday with a straight-sets win over Jan-Lennard Struff, 7-5, 7-6, 6-3, and now gets Novak Djokovic next. The defending champion needed just over two and a half hours to finish the job, a cleaner and shorter route than the five-set opener that had raised questions about how his body would hold up.
That is why the Wimbledon schedule has suddenly sharpened around Sinner again. He was coming off a first-round match that went five sets, so this was the sort of performance that mattered as much for what it said about recovery as for the scoreline itself. He also saved a set point in the second set, a moment that could have changed the match had Struff taken it and dragged the contest into a longer fight.
Sinner’s answer was efficiency. He said he felt “quite comfortable” and that the weather was “warm, but nothing crazy,” words that carried extra weight given the heat and cramp problems he had dealt with at Roland Garros five weeks earlier. He said the day felt “OK,” added that it was “quite dry,” and noted that warm conditions are not the same as the humidity and heat he has faced elsewhere. The point was not just that he survived the conditions. It was that he looked calmer in them.
That mattered because Struff had already taken a punishing route to get here. He won three five-set matches to reach the quarter-finals for the first time at any grand slam tournament, and he did not go quietly. Sinner said he had worked a lot after Paris trying to understand what went wrong, and this was the proof of that work: four straight victories in straight sets, a match under control, and a body that looked more reliable when the pressure rose.
There is still a question hanging over the run. Sinner has solved the immediate problem of Struff and moved on to Djokovic, but he has not yet shown whether the lessons learned after Paris are enough to carry him through the highest-stakes test left in the draw. For now, though, the answer is simple: the champion is still moving, and the semi-final against Djokovic is next.
Alexander Zverev’s four-set win over Jiri Lehecka sits on the other side of the draw, but Sinner’s path now has a much clearer shape. He is through, he is still doing it in straight sets, and the Wimbledon schedule now leads straight to Djokovic.
