Novak Djokovic’s best Wimbledon wins ranked, as he breaks Roger Federer’s match record

THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, London — With a 7-6(6), 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 win over the Russian qualifier Roman Safiullin to reach the 2026 quarterfinals, Novak Djokovic has made yet more Wimbledon history.

Already a seven-time champion, Djokovic’s victory was his 106th at the All England Club, breaking the men’s record previously held by eight-time winner Roger Federer.

In observance of the occasion, here is a ranking of Djokovic’s 10 best wins at Wimbledon, based on a combination of significance, performance quality, and entertainment value. Please argue in the comments.

10. Second round, 2005: Defeats Guillermo García López 3-6, 3-6, 7-6(5), 7-6(3), 6-4

This was Djokovic’s first Wimbledon, which he entered as a qualifier having just turned 18.

In the second round, against world No. 81 Guillermo García López, Djokovic trailed by two sets to love. But demonstrating the defiance that would come to define his game, Djokovic saved six match points before coming back to win in five sets.

A few years later, after pulling off a similar win at the 2009 Halle Open in Germany, Djokovic said, “that victory meant a lot to me back then.” As it might have done — it also took him into the world’s top 100 for the first time.

9. Final, 2022: Defeats Nick Kyrgios 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(3)

Not Djokovic’s most memorable final, but a significant one in securing him a seventh Wimbledon title. In so doing, Djokovic moved level with the great Pete Sampras and one behind Federer.

There was some jeopardy in the match when Kyrgios, who had won the pair’s previous two meetings, won the first set. But Djokovic dug in and didn’t drop his serve again.

With the win, Djokovic also moved to within one of Rafael Nadal’s record of 22 Grand Slam titles, overtaking Federer in the process. It was also Djokovic’s 39th straight victory on Centre Court, going all the way back to his defeat to Andy Murray in the 2013 final.

After the match, Kyrgios described the challenge of trying to beat Djokovic at a major: “In best-of-five against these guys, you feel like if you win the first set, you still have to climb up Mount Everest to get it done.”

8. Fourth round, 2024: Defeats Holger Rune (15) 6-3, 6-4, 6-2

A match that summed up late-career Djokovic.

First, it showed off his ability to school young up-and-comers. Rune, 21, was ranked No. 15 when they played, but he had already been a top-five player.

Second, it showed off his ability to do so when a long way from fully fit. This was the year that Djokovic reached the final, having had knee surgery only a few weeks before the tournament started.

Third, it showed off how Djokovic still had the fire to use the energy of a crowd and turn it back against them.

Djokovic raced through the match in just over two hours, but he was irritable throughout, with large sections of the crowd chanting “Ruuuuuuune,” which he understood to be them booing him. Djokovic chirped back at the crowd during the match, and in his on-court interview afterwards, was asked about the atmosphere.

“Well, to all the fans that have respect and have stayed here tonight: thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. I appreciate it,” he said.

“And to all those people who have chosen to disrespect the player — in this case, me — have a goooooood night. Goooooood night, gooooood night. Very good night. Yep.”

It was pantomime-villain stuff, and extremely entertaining. And as often happened when Djokovic was up against Roger Federer, the darling of Centre Court, it was he who had the last laugh.

7. Final, 2015: Defeats Roger Federer (2) 7‑6(1), 6-7(10), 6-4, 6-3

This was the second of three finals Djokovic and Federer contested at the All England Club.

Djokovic won all three, and this was by far the most comfortable, the only one that did not go to five sets. Djokovic put in a masterful performance against a player who had gone in as many people’s favorite after demolishing the champion of two years earlier, Andy Murray, in the semifinals.

But this was Djokovic at pretty much his peak, one of two years he was one win short of the calendar Grand Slam of all four majors. He won 82 of his 88 matches in 2015.

This final peaked in the second set, when Federer saved seven set points in an extraordinary tiebreak that he won 12-10. It reached the level and the drama of the one he had played against Rafael Nadal in the 2008 final, as well as the legendary one in the fourth set of Björn Borg’s win over John McEnroe in the 1980 final.

Like Borg, Djokovic lost the tiebreak but still won the match, rattling off the next two sets pretty comfortably to claim a third title, and second straight final win against Federer.

6. Quarterfinal, 2007: Defeats Marcos Baghdatis (10) 7-6(4), 7-6(9), 6-7(3), 4-6, 7-5

An extraordinary match that Djokovic won in five sets and a minute shy of five hours, having blown a two-set lead.

This was the version of Djokovic before he’d won a Grand Slam title, when he was still prone to physical and mental lapses. It made for the kind of undulating encounter that Djokovic generally became too efficient to be embroiled in, but which had the No. 1 Court crowd in raptures — so much so that some spectators had to be spoken to by police.

Baghdatis had reached the Australian Open final the year before and was an extremely popular player. A brilliant shotmaker, but prone to tightening up in big moments, he lost the second set having had six set points, but then rallied from 3-0 down in the third to win it, and then the fourth set, to force a decider.

Djokovic became so frustrated that he was given a code violation warning for smashing a racket, before eventually hauling himself over the line.

“The atmosphere was fantastic,“ Djokovic said afterwards in a news conference. “This is some of the best tennis I have ever played.”

5. Final, 2011: Defeats Rafael Nadal (1) 6-4, 6-1, 1-6, 6-3

Too one-sided to be a classic match, this was still a hugely significant one for Djokovic.

It earned him a first Wimbledon title, as well as his first week as world No. 1, in what felt like a public dethroning.

Not only did Nadal lose his top spot in the rankings, but this was also his first defeat at Wimbledon in four years and 20 matches. He missed the 2009 edition because of injury, in between title wins in 2008 and 2010.

Djokovic underlined why he had been able to do the unthinkable since the start of the year, by breaking up the Federer-Nadal duopoly. He served better, successfully attacked the Nadal backhand, and delivered in the clutch moments.

When it was all over, Djokovic ate some of the Wimbledon grass in celebration. It felt like a symbolic marking of territory that now belonged to him. Six more titles followed, and plenty more grass was chewed.

4. Semifinal, 2013: Defeats Juan Martín del Potro (8) 7-5, 4-6, 7-6(2), 6-7(6), 6-3

In what was then the longest Wimbledon semifinal, at four hours and 43 minutes, Djokovic survived one of the most thrilling matches of his career.

Up against the beloved 2009 U.S. Open champion del Potro, Djokovic had to withstand a barrage of forehand bullets to eventually claim a place in the final.

It also came at a time when Djokovic was suddenly finding himself on the wrong end of tight matches at Slams, and it looked as though he might be about to falter again. Djokovic was up a break in the fourth set and then had two match points in a tiebreak but couldn’t close, as del Potro forced a decider.

Again, Djokovic was able to refocus and eventually get it done in five — even if it weakened him physically for the final against Murray a couple of days later.

“It was one of the best matches I’ve been a part of,” Djokovic said in his news conference.

3. Final, 2014: Defeats Roger Federer (4) 6-7(7), 6-4, 7-6(4), 5-7, 6-4

Djokovic came into this one having lost five of his previous six Grand Slam finals, a sequence that had led him to hire three-time Wimbledon champion Boris Becker as his coach.

It looked as though he might be about to suffer another heartbreaking loss when he failed to serve out this final against Federer in the fourth set. In the next game, he had a championship point snatched away from him by a Federer ace, and Federer took things to a fifth set.

As the statisticians looked up the last time someone had lost the Wimbledon men’s final from such a position (John Bromwich in 1948), Djokovic could have unraveled.

Instead, he found a second wind and claimed the kind of win that had eluded him for most of the previous couple of years. “Probably the best Grand Slam final I have ever played in my life,” Djokovic said in a news conference.

Becker added: “We were all dying out there, keeping it cool from the outside, but burning up inside.”

2. Semifinal, 2018: Defeats Rafael Nadal (2) 6-4, 3-6, 7-6(11), 3-6, 10-8

In a recurring theme during the Big Three era, this semifinal was effectively a final. The winner would play South Africa’s Kevin Anderson, who was going to be exhausted after beating John Isner of the U.S. in a semifinal that lasted six hours and 36 minutes.

Because of how long that match took, Djokovic and Nadal’s match had to be halted after three sets on the Friday night, with Djokovic up two sets to one. The quality had been staggeringly good from both players, in a match that was played under the Centre Court roof because of the late start.

The match remained under the roof on the Saturday resumption despite it being a sunny afternoon, honoring a bizarre rule that conditions should remain the same if a match was held over. The rule has since been changed.

An indoor match favored Djokovic, but Nadal was matching his level, and twice had multiple break points in the final set that would have left him serving for the match.

But Djokovic saved the last of them with a spectacular forehand pass, fending off a Nadal barrage before surprising him as he moved forward.

He eventually broke to win the decider 10-8, in the last year that Wimbledon didn’t play a final-set tiebreak.

This was a career-changing win for Djokovic. He hadn’t won a Grand Slam for more than two years, and had fallen out of the world’s top 20 after shoulder surgery in 2017. At his previous Grand Slam, he had lost to the world No. 72 Marco Cecchinato in the quarterfinals, and been so enraged that he said he might skip the grass-court season.

Instead, he won a fourth Wimbledon title and started a run of winning four out of five majors.

1. Final, 2019: Defeats Roger Federer (2) 7-6(5), 1-6, 7-6(4), 4-6, 13-12(3)

One of the most eventful and significant matches in modern tennis history, as Djokovic saved two championship points on the Federer serve on his way to winning a fifth Wimbledon title. Had Federer won it, he’d have moved to 21 Grand Slam titles; he remained on 20, and Djokovic closed the gap by moving to 16 himself.

Federer had dominated much of the match, but Djokovic won two of the first three sets on tiebreaks. Federer then won the fourth and served for the match in the decider, holding two championship points at 8-7, 40-15.

Against the eight-time champion, it seemed all over to absolutely everyone in the stadium — apart from Djokovic himself. On the second championship point, Federer played a hesitant approach shot and Djokovic delivered a forehand pass eerily reminiscent of the one that had fended off Nadal in that pivotal moment in the semifinal a year earlier:

Djokovic broke, then saved two break points at 11-11 with daring forays to the net, before clinching the match in a final set tiebreak, which that year was played at 12-12.

At four hours and 57 minutes, it remains the longest final in Wimbledon history, and has been etched into the tournament’s folklore, from the spectator caught raising her finger and saying “one more” as Federer went to serve up championship point, to Djokovic saying in his news conference that “when the crowd chants ‘Roger’, I hear ‘Novak’.”

Federer had the vast majority of the crowd support, but it was Djokovic who once again proved himself to be the master of Centre Court.

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