“I felt great in Miami” – Sport – Kommersant

On Sunday, in the final match of the Miami Open, which ended in the Florida Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Masters 1000 competition with a prize fund of $ 8.8 million, Russian Daniil Medvedev defeated Italy’s Yannick Sinner in two games and won his fourth tournament in five finals held from mid February. In an interview with a Kommersant correspondent Evgeny Fedyakov The owner of 19 ATP Tour titles commented on the Sunday match, spoke about his plans for the clay season and expressed his hope that three Russian tennis players will be able to play at the final tournament in Turin this year.

– When you learned that in the Miami Open final you will play not with the Spaniard Carlos Alcaras, whom you lost recently in Indian Wells, but with Yannick Sinner, did you feel some relief?

“I take these questions lightly. If possible, I watch a match in which my next opponent is determined, and then how it goes – whoever wins wins. In fact, Alcaraz did not manage to impose a fight on me in Indian Wells. Perhaps it could be done here in Miami, but now we will not know about it. So now, after the final, we can say: it probably turned out really well that I played with Sinner.

— Your match ended with the score 7:5, 6:3. At the end of the first game, did you feel that Sinner had physical problems and the second game could be shorter?

– No. The fact that Yannick is having a harder time physically, I felt only in the second set. Before that, I didn’t fully understand what was going on. At first, the match was very difficult, and I am glad that at the end of the first game and at the beginning of the second I was able to take control of the situation.

– In Indian Wells, you complained about the unnecessarily slow coverage, and in Miami, on the contrary, it was very fast. What caused the sudden change?

– Well, hard is still hard, even if I liked the courts in Indian Wells less. Here I had three days to prepare, so the most important thing was to win the first match and enter the tournament. And then it helped that my second opponent (Slovakian Alex Molchan – “b”) could not enter the game. It goes without saying that I used this time for additional training.

You have been under a lot of physical stress lately. Will she make adjustments to your schedule for the spring clay series, which starts on Monday and ends with the French Open?

So far I haven’t changed anything. To start on clay I’m going to Monte Carlo. I live there and have not played since 2019. Then in my schedule Barcelona, ​​Madrid and Rome. Let’s see how my body feels. I will listen to him. Anyway, in Miami, I felt great.

– Since January, you have scored more than 3,000 ranking points, which you have never managed to do during the first three months of the season, and almost guaranteed yourself a ticket to the final tournament in Turin. How do you evaluate such a result?

— It’s very cool that I have earned so many points. In the ATP Race, I even have a gap (from Novak Djokovic – “b”). But no one knows how events in the course of the season will unfold further. I hope I continue to play well and finish the year as high as possible in the rankings.

– Is it really possible to break into Turin with three of us – together with Karen Khachanov, who is ninth in the ATP Race, and Andrei Rublev, who occupies twelfth place there?

– Hope. At least Andrey took part in the final tournaments for three seasons in a row, and Karen started this year great. The question is that the season is long, and many have chances to get to Turin. So no one can stop there.