Daniil Medvedev coped with nerves and avoided a marathon in the second round of the US Open

At the US Open, which continues in New York, all the participants of the 1/16 finals were determined. Among them was the strongest Russian tennis player Daniil Medvedev, who on the night of Thursday to Friday in four sets coped with the Australian Christopher O’Connell. A little earlier, Andrei Rublev outplayed the 37-year-old Frenchman Gael Monfils. If the Russians manage to win two more matches each, they will face each other in the quarterfinals.

For Daniil Medvedev, the second round meeting with Christopher O’Connell turned out to be the first real test at the current tournament. The previous match with Attila Balazs, in which the Russian lost only two games, could not have been such, due to the fact that the 34-year-old Hungarian, who got into the main draw according to the protected rating rule, had not played since April, and won his last victory in official competitions almost 15 months ago. O’Connell, on the contrary, is having a very successful season for himself, and after the completion of the US Open, apparently, for the first time, he will be in the world rankings among the 65 best in the world. True, the American series did not work out for him, but Medvedev, according to him, perfectly remembered the quarterfinals of the February tournament in Doha, where the 29-year-old Australian forced him to fight hard and won one set.

This match was on the Thursday evening program and started at about 10:00 pm, and Medvedev is not a big fan of playing majors at night. To do this, a tennis player needs to significantly change his usual schedule, both on the game day and the next day, and when the game is very long, the situation with the regime often takes an extreme turn.

True, at first the Russians had no reason to worry. In the first and especially in the second sets, which ended with the same score of 6:2, he had a noticeable advantage, and in the third installment Medvedev took the lead – 3:1. However, he still failed to achieve a quick victory.

In the eighth game, O’Connell, taking advantage of the opponent’s loss of concentration, equalized the score, and soon left behind a tie-break, during which the Russian was leading 6:4, but then missed two match points by his own mistakes.

Having lost his psychological balance for a while, Medvedev once again demonstrated a new model of such behavior in a stressful situation, which each fan is free to interpret in his own way. One will call it a tricky attempt to bring down O’Connell’s mood, another – a legitimate way to dump negative energy, and the third will consider it a manifestation of self-irony, which also repeatedly helped Medvedev in such alterations. In short, in this case, he called the doctor to the court – just as O’Connell had done before, complaining of breathing problems.

And when the doctor came out, the Russian asked for the same medicine that was given to his opponent. “What are your symptoms?” the doctor asked Medvedev. “I lost the set,” he replied.

And soon after this conversation, everything fell into place. Medvedev made two more breaks and at about 1 a.m. New York time ended this statistically inconsistent match, during which, in his best traditions, he managed to quarrel with the fans, won 41 points with blows right through and made exactly the same number of unforced errors. The score of aces and double faults, by the way, is also approximately equal – 12:10, that is, by the third round, the Russian needs not only to restore morale, but also to slightly correct the sight. After all, there he will meet with the 32nd racket of the world Argentinean Sebastian Baes, who, taking into account the clay tournament in Kitzbühel and the recent competition in Cleveland, has already won 12 matches in a row. Yielding to Medvedev in height of 28 centimeters, this fast and combative tennis player is able to deliver him even more serious difficulties than O’Connell.

The second round was not an easy walk for Andrey Rublev, who theoretically goes to Medvedev in the quarterfinals, and on Thursday dealt with 37-year-old French veteran Gael Monfils, who also took one set from the Russian. Rublev’s next opponent will be the lesser-known French representative Arthur Rinderknech.

And in the women’s part of the tournament, out of 14 Russians who started in the first round, three continue the fight – Daria Kasatkina, who will now have a match with Belgian Gret Minnen, Lyudmila Samsonova, who has entered the 17th racket of the world, American Madison Keys, and Ekaterina Alexandrova, who will tough meeting with the sensational Wimbledon champion Czech Marketa Vondrousova.

Evgeny Fedyakov