Daniil Medvedev grew up with Florida – Newspaper Kommersant No. 56 (7501) dated 04/03/2023

Daniil Medvedev became the winner of the Miami Open, the Masters 1000 tournament of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) in Florida with a prize fund of $8.8 million. Having beaten the Italian Yannick Sinner in the decisive match in two games, he won the fourth title this year and the 19th in his career. Moreover, a successful performance in Miami allowed the 27-year-old Russian to score more than 3,000 rating points in three months of the season and almost guarantee himself participation in the November final tournament of the year.

Before the start of the final between Daniil Medvedev and Yannick Sinner, it was already known that regardless of his result on Monday, there would be a change of leaders in both ATP classifications. The fact is that the Spaniard Carlos Alcaras, who lost to Sinner in the semifinals, failed to defend last year’s “championship” 1000 points and let Serb Novak Djokovic, who was absent in first place for only two weeks, go ahead. At the same time, Djokovic was behind Medvedev in the ATP Race, a classification that takes into account points scored since January and serves to select participants in the final tournament of the year, the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin. Given the brilliant results of the Russian over the past month and a half, there was nothing supernatural in this, of course.

The score of personal meetings of the finalists – 5:0 in favor of Medvedev – seemed to make it clear who in this case should be considered the favorite.

However, according to most bookmakers, the chances of the opponents were absolutely equal. This was explained by the fact that in their previous match, the final of the February 500 tournament in Rotterdam, Medvedev initially experienced serious problems, as well as the outrageous level of tennis that Sinner demonstrated in recent days. On the way to the semi-final against Alcaraz, he did not lose a single game, and in the battle with the Spaniard, which lasted more than three hours, he remained calm in the most unpleasant minutes for himself and turned the tide of the fight after an unsuccessful tie-break in the first set. Moreover, unlike Medvedev, the Italian has already reached the final in Miami. It was two years ago, when Sinner fought on equal terms with the Pole Hubert Hurkacz.

The final consisted of two parts, which turned out to be different both in duration and in the degree of rivalry on the court. More precisely, the degree was high from beginning to end. The rainy and relatively cool weather that stood in Miami for several days was replaced by a 30-degree heat, which had some effect on the course of the struggle. At first she was stubborn. Sinner, as one might expect, tried to break through the defense of Medvedev, who in the second game did not use the opportunity to take someone else’s serve, and in the fifth, having made three double faults, he lost his. However, in the sixth game, a reverse break followed, already Medvedev’s, and at the next change of sides, a physiotherapist and a doctor suddenly ran onto the court, who talked about something with the Italian and gave him some pills. About an hour later, already at the awards ceremony, Sinner will tell that poor health prevented him from enjoying the final day from the very morning. Apparently, the body of a 21-year-old tennis player, who has never been distinguished by outstanding endurance, nevertheless failed in the Florida sun after a tough battle with Carlos Alcaraz.

Be that as it may, the fundamental attacking game that Sinner has been successfully improving lately under the leadership of Australian Darren Cahill, who worked with ex-first rackets of the world Lleyton Hewitt, Andre Agassi and Simone Halep, crumbled before our eyes

Therefore, having easily won the twelfth game of the first game on the opponent’s serve, Medvedev exchanged serves with him in the middle of the second game, and then made a decisive break.

As a result – 7:5, 6:3 in 1 hour 34 minutes. Having played five finals since mid-February, Medvedev won four of them – in Rotterdam, Doha, Dubai and Miami. In total, since the beginning of his career, he has won his 19th title in 19 different cities, which is a unique achievement for the ATP Tour. In addition, the Russian has recorded a step forward in the world rankings, moving from fifth to fourth place, which was previously occupied by the Norwegian Kasper Ruud. No less important is the fact that according to the results of the first three months of the season, Medvedev has already scored 3,030 rating points. This means that not only is he ahead of Djokovic in the ATP Race by exactly 600 points, but even now he can not worry about participating in the final tournament of the year, the Nitto ATP Finals. After all, according to the experience of past years, to get into this competition, you need to have about 3,500 points in your asset.

Evgeny Fedyakov