Daniil Medvedev will play his eighth title match this year in Beijing

The finalist of the China Open, a 500-category Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tournament in Beijing with a prize fund of $3.6 million, was Daniil Medvedev, who beat Alexander Zverev from Germany in two games. The Russian’s opponent in his eighth final since the beginning of this season, as in the decisive matches of the tournaments in Rotterdam and Miami, will be the Italian Jannik Sinner, who defeated the second racket of the world, the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz.

The Chinese Open was Daniil Medvedev’s first tournament after loss to Novak Djokovic in the final of the US Open. He withdrew from the competition in Zhuhai, for which the Russian was previously registered, arguing his decision by the need for a longer rest. The pause in speeches clearly benefited Medvedev.

In Beijing, where he had never played before, he demonstrates excellent tennis, even despite the heavy balls, which in recent days have been criticized not only by the Russian, but also, for example, by the second racket of the world, Carlos Alcaraz.

In the four matches played, Medvedev experienced only one serious setback – in the quarterfinals against the Frenchman Hugues Humbert, who managed to take the second set.

The semi-final between Medvedev and Alexander Zverev was their seventeenth meeting. Since 2016, when their tournament paths first crossed in St. Petersburg, where the German tennis player gained the upper hand, no one has played each other as often at the ATP level. Medvedev led in this series with a score of 9:7. He won all four of his previous matches this season, although they were all tough. In Indian Wells, Monte Carlo and Cincinnati, the Russian needed three games each, and in Rome it was limited to two, but Zverev brought one of them to a tiebreaker. True, now the physical form of the German tennis player raised serious doubts. Unlike Medvedev, Zverev played a week earlier in Chengdu, where in a protracted final he broke the resistance of Russian Roman Safiullin with enormous difficulty, and all three of his previous matches in Beijing also consisted of three games.

In total, since the beginning of the China Open, Medvedev has spent two hours less on the courts than his opponent, and this is a noticeable difference for a week-long tournament.

As a result, the semi-final turned out to be quite short-lived. It took Medvedev 75 minutes to win, although it cannot be said that it came to him very easily. Zverev, who lost his serve once at the end of both games, apparently still lacked freshness, although in general he was quite stable and did not always concede in very spectacular long rallies to the Russian, who, in turn, played an almost flawless match . Under the roof, which was closed by the tournament organizers due to rain, Medvedev’s powerful serve worked almost perfectly, making eight aces with one double fault and winning all four break points. On the back line, he looked almost impenetrable, time after time baffling his opponent with his trademark sharp counterattacking shots from the very corners of the court. Having won 6:4, 6:3, Medvedev, who has won five titles this season, will play his eighth final since February, equaling Carlos Alcaraz in this indicator. And he, in turn, a couple of hours later missed the opportunity to again take the lead in this indicator, losing to Jannik Sinner.

The success of the Italian, who took the first set from Alcaraz in a tiebreak and completely dominated the second game, cannot be called a sensation. Until this Tuesday, Sinner was just slightly inferior to the Spaniard in personal meetings (3:4), and in early April he surpassed him in the semifinals of a major tournament in Miami, where he then lost the final to Medvedev. The Russian also retained another title match, played this year against an Italian in Rotterdam. So Medvedev looks like the favorite in Beijing.

But no matter how the final ends, one fundamental outcome of the China Open is already known. Alcaraz, who is trying to take away the first place in the rankings at the end of the year from Novak Djokovic, managed to earn only 180 points out of a maximum possible 500 in Beijing. And although the Serbian’s advantage over the Spaniard will be reduced from 3260 points to 2830, this margin allows Djokovic to hope that at the end of November, he will remain in leadership. Let us remind you that the Serbian veteran, after the US Open, showed up for only two personal competitions – the Paris Masters 1000 tournament and the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, while Alcaraz from Beijing goes to the Masters in Shanghai, and at the end of October he will also compete at “five hundred” in Basel.

Evgeniy Fedyakov