Novak Djokovic is the great attraction these days at the Mallorca Championships, above the stars that are playing these days on the slopes of Santa Ponça the singles tournament. The Serbian also he has taken his participation in the doubles competition very seriously together with the Andalusian Carlos Gómez Herrera, a friend with whom he often trains at the Puente Romano Club during his stays in Marbella.
So much so, that the Serbo-Spanish couple got off this Wednesday the top favorites, Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos, one of the best duos in the world, who succumbed in the super tiebreaker: 4-6, 7-6 (3) and 10-8. Tournament director Toni Nadal enjoyed the success of the invitation to the recent Roland Garros winner in the stands.
Gómez Herrera had a lot of prominence in the key moments of the game’s outcome. “I’m living a dream,” he said after the victory with Djokovic, who thanked the audience in Spanish that filled the stands of the center court in large numbers. The Balkan is living a moment of enormous ambition, in which he does not want to lose under any circumstances, even if that makes him arrive later than planned at Wimbledon. This Thursday, he and his Marbella colleague will face Austrian Oliver Marach and Pakistani Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi, third favorites, in the semifinals.
Skill
Djokovic also demonstrated his expertise in pair tennis and Gómez Herrera was not behind, despite their difference in the individual ranking (number one next to 258). It was not easy to beat the Spanish-Argentine team, made up of two top-10 doubles classification (Granollers is 10th and Zeballos 7th).