Daniil Medvedev advanced to the third round of Wimbledon by defeating Adrian Mannarino in two days

The fifth day of Wimbledon, which continues in London, turned out to be successful for the third racket of the world, Daniil Medvedev. Postponing Thursday night’s meeting with Frenchman Adrian Mannarino, he quickly brought it to victory in three games and reached the 1/16 finals of the grass major for the fourth time in his career. The next opponent of the Russian will be the Hungarian Marton Fucovich, who ranks 67th in the ranking of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP).

Adriana Mannarino, his opponent in the 1/32 final match, Daniil Medvedev knew very well. Perhaps even better than he would have liked. The fact is that in six previous face-to-face meetings, the Frenchman won four victories, and five years ago he turned out to be stronger in five games in the third round of Wimbledon, and just three weeks ago he beat Medvedev on the grass of the Dutch Hertogenbosch. At 35, Mannarino occupies a high 35th place in the ATP rankings and, due to the decline that French men’s tennis is now experiencing, is even the first racket of his country, but does not have any outstanding achievements. Mannarino has only two single ATP titles, at the Grand Slam tournaments, he never advanced beyond the fourth round, so such a successful statistics of his meetings with such a venerable tennis player as Medvedev, at first glance, could seem amazing.

In fact, she has a very specific reason. It consists in the fact that Mannarino adheres to a very rare style, which is convenient for some of his rivals, and very unpleasant for others. Using the weakest string tension of the top 100 players (in some cases it can be as low as 11 kg), the Frenchman often plays with the so-called coasters, using the strength of the opponent’s blows or skillfully defending in other ways, dragging out the draws as much as possible in anticipation of other people’s mistakes. This kind of tennis requires him to be in good physical condition, and when Mannarino is in optimal condition, it is not easy to cope with him. Especially on the grass, where the Frenchman, unlike the clay surface, is often given the opportunity to win points on his own.

To outplay Mannarino, you need to have a lot of patience and take smart risks. In ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Medvedev succeeded only in the first game, and then the Frenchman somehow imperceptibly transferred the game under his control.

However, on the second court of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, things turned out differently. By the time that match was postponed due to darkness on Thursday, Medvedev had a tangible advantage. At first he had a hard time. In the fourth game, on the serve of the Russian, which lasted 11 minutes, it was “exactly” seven times. But soon Mannarino, who played the final of the grass tournament in Mallorca on the eve of the start of Wimbledon, fell sharply. Starting with a score of 3:2 in favor of the Frenchman, Medvedev took eight games in a row, completing the first set in his favor and prejudging the outcome of the second game. In the fifth game of the third set, the Russian again won someone else’s pitch, but in the eighth gave his own, after which, with a score of 4: 4, he got the referee to postpone the match to Friday, since twilight was already thickening over Wimbledon and it became uncomfortable to play.

The replay turned out to be quite efficient. Mannarino tried his best to save the match and once managed to complete a marathon rally of 33 hits at the net.

And yet, the tie-break remained with Medvedev, who, after the Frenchman’s mistake, ended the meeting from the second match point

The Russian reached the 1/16 finals at Wimbledon for the fourth time, where he will now play with the 67th racket of the world, Marton Fucovich. It is dangerous to underestimate the Hungarian tennis player. Fucovic showed his best result at the majors two years ago just in London, when he beat the Italian Yannick Sinner at the start, Andrei Rublev in the fourth round, and only in the quarterfinals lost to the future champion Novak Djokovic.

At the women’s tournament on Friday, three Russians entered the Wimbledon courts. Ekaterina Alexandrova and Anna Blinkova, like Medvedev, passed the second round, and the meeting between Alexandrova and American Madison Brengle will go down in history as the first Wimbledon women’s match since the beginning of the Open Era (since 1968), in which three tie-breaks were held. Having won 49 points with blows right through and making 91 unforced errors, Alexandrova nevertheless managed to win in 2 hours and 49 minutes. But for the tenth racket of the world Darya Kasatkina, the current tournament is over. The match of the 1/16 finals against the former first racket of the world Victoria Azarenka, who is physically stronger and much more aggressive, she lost in two games.

Evgeny Fedyakov