Daniil Medvedev pulled at the Roman turn – Kommersant
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One of the main outcomes of the Internazionali BNL d’Italia, the ongoing €7.7 million Masters 1000 tournament in Rome of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) will be the change of leader in the ATP Race, a classification that takes into account points scored since the beginning of the year. Instead of the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, the Russian Daniil Medvedev will rise to the top position there, who is having his best clay season and will meet with the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas in the semifinals on Saturday.
This year at the Italian Open, several unexpected results were recorded at once. But the loudest sensation was the defeat of the Spaniard Carlos Alcaras from the Hungarian Fabian Marozhan in the 1/16 finals. The undisputed leader of the clay season, who won two titles in a row in Barcelona and Madrid and will lead the world rankings on May 22, lost to an opponent who currently occupies only 135th place there and has never previously entered the main draws of ATP tournaments. Last year’s Roman champion Serbian Novak Djokovic, who lost in the quarterfinals to Dane Holger Rune, also failed.
Unlike them, the Russian Daniil Medvedev holds the best clay season of his career. He played the quarter-finals in Monte Carlo, went two rounds in Madrid, and in Rome, where he had not won a single match before, unexpectedly for many made it to the semi-finals. Having outplayed Finn Emil Ruusuvuori at the start and then coped with the strong Spanish primer Bernabé Zapata Miralles, he then defeated a very principled opponent for himself, Alexander Zverev from Germany, for the third time in the last three months, and in the quarterfinals practically left no chance for another German tennis player Yannick Hanfman, whose victim Andrei Rublev had previously fallen. This victory, won with a score of 6:2, 6:2 in just 80 minutes, turned out to be the fastest for Medvedev in the tournament.
Such a successful performance at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia will already allow Medvedev to update his personal record for points scored during the season on clay.
Prior to that, the Russian performed most successfully on this surface in 2021, when he went one round in Madrid, lost his opening match in Rome, reached the quarterfinals of Roland Garros and received a total of 460 points. Now, since the beginning of April, he already has 630 points, including 360 Roman ones. But Roland Garros is still ahead, where Medvedev’s chances for a good result are quoted more and more almost every spring day.
What’s more, Alcaraz’s and Djokovic’s latest setbacks, combined with his own success, will surely see Medvedev return to the top spot in the ATP Race, a classification based on points scored since the beginning of the year that serves to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals in November. in Turin.
On Monday, Djokovic will have 2745 points there, Alcaraz – 3455, and Medvedev – at least 3660.
To appreciate how much this is, it is enough to remember that for the entire last year, following which the Russian finished seventh in the ranking, he scored 4065 points.
Whether Medvedev will be able to increase the lead over Alcaraz will become clear after the end of Saturday’s semi-final against Stefanos Tsitsipas. The Greek, while in Rome, also looks very solid: in four matches, including the quarterfinal against the Croat Borna Coric, he did not give up a single game. Moreover, unlike the Russian, Tsitsipas considers clay to be his favorite surface, on which he took four of his nine titles (including two in Monte Carlo) and held seven finals (including last year in Rome and in the year before last at Roland Garros). Nevertheless, the score of personal meetings between Medvedev and Tsitsipas is 7:4, and in one of the two matches on clay, in Monte Carlo four years ago, the Russian took over. It is not easy to predict the winner of the other semi-final, between Holger Rune and Kasper Ruud. Lately, the young Dane seems to be looking clearly preferable, but all four of their previous matches went to the Norwegian.
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