Daniil Medvedev reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open

Following the results of the 11th day of the Australian Open, which is entering the home stretch in Melbourne, Daniil Medvedev made it to the semifinals, beating Pole Hubert Hurkacz in five games. Having reached this stage at the Grand Slam tournaments for the eighth time, he set a record among Russian tennis players, improving the figure of Marat Safin. Medvedev’s next opponent will be Alexander Zverev from Germany, and Anna Kalinskaya completed her successful performance at the women’s tournament. She lost in the quarterfinals to Chinese Zheng Qingwen, who will debut in the top ten of the world rankings next Monday.

From the point of view of game style and psychological background, the quarterfinal against Hubert Hurkacz simply fit perfectly into this exhausting, but so far successful Australian Open for Daniil Medvedev. Powerful serves and brilliant combinations performed by the Russian were followed by double faults and unsuccessful rallies, brilliant periods were followed by sharp declines, and the most dangerous opponent was not going to give up until the last, not allowing the Russian tennis player to relax for a long time.

But in the end, after 3 hours 59 minutes of exhausting struggle, everything ended successfully, and Medvedev set a personal record. Having reached the top four at a Grand Slam tournament for the eighth time in his career, he did this for the first time by pulling out two five-set matches at once.

In total, the Russian played six games in five meetings. Never before has the road to the semi-finals looked so viscous and confusing for him.

This can be explained by at least two reasons. One of them is Medvedev’s experimental schedule at the start of the season, or rather its absence, since he first began competing in January directly at the Australian Open, missing the intermediate tournaments. Secondly, the average level of his rivals in Melbourne is quite high. Let’s say, in the third round, the Russian got the former sixth number in the world ranking, Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime, with whom, however, Medvedev dealt with it relatively quickly. As for the quarterfinals specifically, life was not expected to be easy. It was clear in advance that Hurkacz, who had not previously risen above ninth place in the world classification, but is gradually settling into the top ten and will be eighth there on Monday, will provide fierce resistance to the Russian.

And so it happened. And it’s hard to say how things would have ended if Medvedev had not won the first set tiebreaker. After all, this is what allowed him to give away the second game relatively painlessly, which, remaining with Hurkach, did not affect anything. If we talk about Medvedev’s failure at the end of the fourth set, during which he confidently led – 4:2, then a similar story happened with the third racket of the world in the previous match against the Portuguese Nuno Borges, when Medvedev adjusted his aim in time.

The decisive events in this case unfolded in the seventh and eighth games of the fifth set, when the Russian tennis player first won someone else’s serve, and then with problems, but still retained his own. As a result – 7:6 (7:4), 2:6, 6:3, 5:7, 6:4. Hurkacz has noticeably better statistical indicators on serve, he converted one more break point, reached the net noticeably more often and, one might say, beat his opponent in points – 164:156. But Medvedev still ended up in the top four of this Australian Open. This means that another record, already Russian and quite old, has fallen – for the number of appearances in the semi-finals of Grand Slam tournaments in the men’s singles, which was set by Marat Safin at Wimbledon in 2008. He has seven such semi-finals left, and Medvedev has eight. In addition to them, Yevgeny Kafelnikov played the majors six times at this stage, Nikolai Davydenko four times, Mikhail Youzhny and Karen Khachanov twice each. By the way, only 12 of the 28 previous semi-finals were successful for the Russians, and Medvedev also won the most – five victories.

His sixth opponent in the last two weeks will be Alexander Zverev of Germany. In the quarterfinals against Carlos Alcaraz, his chances were lower, but the Spanish tennis player, who came to Melbourne without his regular coach Juan Carlos Ferrero, who underwent a complex operation in December, was defeated in four sets.

Zverev for the first time coped at Grand Slam tournaments with an opponent from the top five in the world rankings, and he will play with Medvedev for the 19th time.

The score in this series is so far in favor of the Russian – 11:7, however, all previous matches were played in three games, since they did not take place at majors.

The quarterfinals of the women’s tournament have also ended. One of them was attended by Russian Anna Kalinskaya, who met with the Chinese Zheng Qingwen and had a very good second half of the tiebreak of the first set, taking four points in a row, starting with a score of 3:4. In the second set the game continued to be equal. Kalinskaya demonstrated elegant combinations more than once, but Zheng Qingwen, largely due to her excellent backhand shot, after which the ball flies along a low trajectory that is very inconvenient for her opponent, confidently held serve, and in the eighth game she made a break.

The third set frankly didn’t work out for the Russian. Having won only 18 points in 2 hours and 20 minutes against her opponent’s 42, she lost – 7:6 (7:4), 3:6, 1:6. Nevertheless, this coming Monday Kalinskaya, who has never been in the top fifty of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) rankings, will be there in about 38th place. And Zheng Qingwen will make her debut in the top 10, but only after she plays at least one more match in Melbourne – against the even more sensational Australian Open semi-finalist Dayana Yastremskaya.

The Ukrainian tennis player, who once won three WTA tournaments and is now ranked only 93rd, is clearly overcoming a long decline in her career. On Wednesday, she confidently dealt with Czech Linda Noskova, who stopped world number one Iga Swiatek in the third round. This allowed Yastremskaya to become the first semi-finalist of the Melbourne Major in the last 46 years to make it into the main draw through qualification. In total, this is only the fifth time this has happened at Grand Slam tournaments during the Open era (since 1968). The previous case, at the US Open 2021, by the way, was unique – Briton Emma Raducanu then won the title.

Evgeniy Fedyakov