Djokovic dishes on Fish in straight-set smackdown
"We're having Fish for lunch today," the fan said. "Well done."
Indeed, American Mardy Fish was Djokovic's dish in their fourth-round encounter, helpless to hurt the Serb in a 6-3, 6-4, 6-1 loss that lasted less than two hours.
The No. 19 seed entered a winner in 25 of 29 matches since June 8, but never looked completely comfortable in Flushing, where he was stretched to five sets in first-week matches with No. 82 Jan Hajek and No. 68 Arnaud Clement.
Djokovic, on the other hand, has gotten better with each passing round. Against Fish, he converted six of eight break points and conceded only three aces.
"It's very encouraging at this stage of the tournament that I'm raising my game and feeling more comfortable on the court," said Djokovic. "I was using my serve in important moments extremely well, opening the court and not giving him enough chances to come to the net and be aggressive."
"I felt so many times today -- even off my first serves -- I was sort of fighting to neutralize the point," said Fish. "I was on my back foot quite a bit, even when I was with the wind."
"He puts a lot of pressure on you with his movement," said Fish. "He's probably one of the top three fastest guys on tour.
"It's very hard to wrong-foot him. It's very hard to hit a winner from the baseline. It's very hard to get him on defense. You can't really rely on much as far as a game plan against him."
Djokovic, the 2007 US Open runner-up, advances to the quarterfinals to play No. 17 Gael Monfils, whom he has defeated in all four of their career meetings.
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