Djokovic and Nadal to be challenged by one-handed backhand

Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal must quell a double-edged assault from masters of the dying art of the single-handed backhand if they are to set up a blockbuster US Open final.

The world's top two men have comfortably been the best players at the tournament with Djokovic dropping just one set in five rounds and Nadal not having been broken.

While they have reigned supreme, defending champion Andy Murray slumped to a quarter-final loss to Stanislas Wawrinka and five-time champion Roger Federer was gone by the fourth round.

Today, six-time major champion Djokovic, playing in a 14th successive grand slam semi-final and seventh in a row in New York, where he was a 2011 winner, will attempt to make Wawrinka's maiden last-four appearance a painful experience.

Nadal, the 12-time grand slam title winner and the 2010 New York champion, faces Richard Gasquet, the French eighth seed and one of his closest friends on tour.

Gasquet, like Wawrinka, has reached his first semi-final of the US Open. The two outsiders also have something else in common - a lethal expertise in the one-handed backhand, something that neither Djokovic nor Nadal employ.