By Chris Oddo | Wednesday June 1, 2016

Roland Garros gave the players a big, fat lemon on Days 9 and 10, and from those lemons World No. 1 Novak Djokovic has promptly made himself some lemonade. Djokovic finished off a grueling two-day victory over Spain’s Roberto Bautista Agut on Wednesday to book his spot in the last eight, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1, 7-5, and though he had every excuse to be tired, frustrated—even panicked, Djokovic instead appeared calm and composed as he addressed the media.

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“Weather conditions are something you can't really affect if you don't have special abilities,” Djokovic said. “Other than that, you have to wait and pray for good weather, and that's what we did.”

Djokovic’s prayers were answered in the form of good (enough) weather on Day 11, and he made use of the drier conditions to finish off a tricky opponent to claim his 28th consecutive quarterfinal appearance at Grand Slams. Only Roger Federer, who once reached 36 consecutive quarterfinals at majors, has a longer streak now.

His tennis was more than impressive, given the conditions, but Djokovic’s mental approach and ability to stay calm with so much at stake was even more so.

“It's the same for you and your opponent,” he said of the two-day affair that began in steady rain on Tuesday but had to be held over until today when conditions became unplayable. “But it was a great mental test for all of us, really, yesterday the entire day. I'm, in a way, glad to have a match like this, because it's a challenge that you need to overcome mentally mostly.”

Djokovic’s victory means that he’s trimmed his magic number to three in Paris. Three more wins and he’ll have captured the crown that he’s sought for many years and become the eighth player to own the coveted Career Slam, comprised of all four major titles.

At the moment the Serb is not thinking too far ahead, but he is aware of the fact that he’ll likely have to play three best-of-five matches in the next four days to claim the title (weather permitting). And he’s more than fine with that.

“That's an ideal scenario right there,” Djokovic said. “Let's see, first of all, whether or not I can win my quarterfinals and put myself in a position to play semis and maybe final. That's No. 1. And No. 2 is whether we're going to have rain or not. It just really depends.”

Djokovic will face seventh-seeded Tomas Berdych in the quarterfinals. The Czech eased past David Ferrer in another two-day affair on Wednesday, winning 6-3, 7-5, 6-3.

“Really I have nothing to lose,” Berdych, who owns a 2-23 record against Djokovic including ten consecutive losses, said. “I'm playing well and I'm just going to try to stick with that. I'm going to try to, again, use my tennis as much as I can on the court and really just try to be the one who is dictating the ball. Then let's see what's going to happen and how it's going to go.”