Djokovic draws level with Federer at 105 Wimbledon wins — but the harder tests await

On a sun-baked Centre Court on 3 July 2026, Novak Djokovic did what Novak Djokovic has done roughly 105 times at the All England Club: he won a men's singles match at Wimbledon. This one was harder than most. France's Arthur Rinderknech, ranked well outside the seedings but in the form of his life on grass, took a set off the seventh seed and forced the Serb to rescue the fourth on a tiebreak. The scoreline — 7-5, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (4) — gave Djokovic his 105th men's singles match win at SW19, drawing him level with Roger Federer at the top of the men's list.

Federer's mark stood for six years; Djokovic has now matched it on the way to a last-16 meeting that the draw has yet to fully resolve. The headline number is the milestone, but the underlying story is that this is a player still rebuilding his grass-court rhythm in real time, four sets at a time, against opponents with nothing to lose.

A record that resists casual comparison

The 105 figure deserves a moment of context. It is the count of men's singles matches won at Wimbledon, which is to say: first-round matches and five-set epics count the same, and losses do not register at all. Federer's total — and now Djokovic's — was built across two decades of largely unrivalled grass-court tennis. Margaret Court's all-time, mixed-gender record sits above both, though the women's competition in her era was smaller and shorter. The implicit claim of the Federer-Djokovic duel is narrower but harder: best male player, best single venue, open era.

For Djokovic, who already holds the men's record at the Australian Open and Roland Garros, the symmetry with Federer at the All England Club completes a chapter of the story he has spent the last eighteen months writing. That he did it against Rinderknech rather than in a glamour tie is, on closer look, the point. The hard rounds are the ones that count at this stage of his career.

The match itself: messy, then decisive

By the standards of Djokovic's 105 wins, this was untidy. He took the first two sets and seemed to be coasting before Rinderknech broke early in the third and ran away with it 6-1. The fourth set went with serve until a tiebreak that Djokovic closed 7-4, finishing the job in just over three hours. Afterwards the seventh seed was characteristically phlegmatic — "it took a bit of luck and skill in the end," he told reporters — and admitted that he had not played his sharpest tennis.

The wobble matters. Rinderknech arrived in London with little expectation and exited having pushed one of the three greatest male players of the modern era to a fourth-set tiebreak. He hit the kind of clean, flat groundstrokes that trouble even Djokovic at altitude if not at sea level, and he showed nothing in his demeanour to suggest he was over-awed. Against an opponent a full tier below in the seeding list, that should not happen to a player with one major left in the year.

Why the number is less than the chase

The 105th win matters as a footnote to the real question: can Djokovic, at 38 if the timeline holds, add a 25th Grand Slam title this fortnight? He has now moved past Federer. What he has not done is win a major of any kind in 2026, and his body — long the great advantage that separated him from his rivals — has become a variable rather than a constant. The third-round struggles against Rinderknech were not the first signs of fragility this year, just the latest.

The structural read is straightforward. Djokovic is no longer the man who defends by default. He is a contemporary of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, the two players who between them have claimed the last several slams and who sit higher in the rankings. Wimbledon remains the surface on which the old order has its best chance of holding, and Djokovic's draw — manageable on paper through the early rounds — sets up a probable quarter-final against one of the younger guards. That, more than a tenth-of-a-century-old milestone, is the test the next ten days will judge him on.

What the milestone does and does not settle

Federer, watching from retirement and now looking down the rankings rather than up, has not publicly addressed Djokovic's latest equaliser; the Swiss's own relationship with Wimbledon is now a museum exhibit as much as a competitive concern. The 105 mark will not decide the GOAT debate, which never resolves cleanly and probably never will. What it does establish is that Djokovic's case, at this single venue, is no longer distinguishable from Federer's on raw numbers. If he lifts the trophy on the second Sunday of July, he will own the record outright; if he does not, the conversation continues.

What remains uncertain, and the sources do not resolve, is whether the form concerns visible in the Rinderknech match are a temporary dip or a structural feature of his 2026 grass season. The draw so far has not asked the hardest questions. The next round will begin to.

Staff note: Monexus has framed this as a benchmark rather than a coronation; the wire coverage leaned on the milestone but said little about the form doubts the four-set scoreline exposed.