For world tennis to stay healthy, Daniil Medvedev needs to get well soon. The perennial anti-hero, that almost 2 meters tall high-hurdle that the history-chasing stars across generations face in their pursuit of greatness, is facing a career threatening slump.
He might have slipped out of the Top 10 and has now won just one match in the last four Grand Slams. But for tennis to retain its reputation as a storied sport, it surely needs giants like Novak Djokovic, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz but it also can’t do without the reputed giant-slayer and the highly unpredictable Medvedev. The Russian should be at the Majors, at least for one more season.
On Sunday, in a highly entertaining first round match of the US Open, Medvedev lost to Benjamin Bonzi of France and while doing so he also gave an answer to those who moan about the lack of characters in modern tennis. It was a game that had the crowd involved, there were cheers and boos.
With the light fading, Medvedev was on the brink of getting knocked out again. But when he was trailing 3-6, 5-7, 4-5, all hell broke loose. Bonzi’s first serve was a fault and he was all set to launch his second serve. That’s when a veteran photographer moved on the sidelines and the chair umpire Gregory Allensworth interpreted it as an interference to play. Bonzi was given the second serve and Medvedev snapped.
The crowd was on the Russian’s side for once, they jeered the umpire. An innocuous match was turned on its head. Medvedev the entertainer was at it again. The French man panicked, Medevedev made it 2-2 but lost in five sets.
History of outbursts
The Russian has had a history of ugly on-court outbursts but he is no Nick Kyrgios. He confessed to being an idiot, and a clown, on court. He once threw coins at the umpire at Wimbledon to hint that he had been bribed by his opponent. He unleashed a kick on an on-court broadcast camera as he bumped into it when scampering on the baseline.
He has snatched the towel from a ball boy’s hands and showed a middle finger to an umpire. On most occasions, it is the manifestation of his frustration brewing inside, the sudden outpouring of emotions by a player who rightly feels that he has been wronged.
Except for the few times he has crossed the line, Medvedev comes across as more human than the many poker-faced robots smashing the yellow fuzzy ball into a pulp. The Russian makes the early rounds less boring. If he were British, they would have built Mount Medvedev for him at Wimbledon. If he were an American, his every transgression would be painted as a virtue.
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His nationality hasn’t helped. In these times, even before Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine, the world is in no mood to celebrate anything Russian. Playing Nadal, he had to suffer shouts of ‘Go back to Russia’ from the stands. At the Australian Open quarter-final, his opponent Felix Auger-Aliassime was asked to up his game and “Do it for Ukraine”. Medvedev looked puzzled. He was a tennis pro, not Putin.
Testing the young stars
Medvedev is just 29 and he has it in him to ensure that tennis doesn’t become a boring Alcaraz-Sinner duopoly in years to come. He can also inspire Djokovic to give his best one last time.
The Russian once dealt a blow the GOAT would never forget. The year was 2021, Djokovic was playing near-perfect tennis, and dismissing every player he faced with disdain. He had won the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon, next was the US Open. After Rod Laver’s 1969 Calendar Slam, history was about to get repeated. It didn’t happen. Medvedev won and that day the Russian multiplied his enemies.
The following year, at the 2022 Australian Open final, he almost spoiled the crowd favourite Nadal’s comeback. Leading 0-2, he lost in five sets. As if cursed for spoiling Djokovic’s party, Medvedev again squandered a 2-0 lead in the Australian Open final in 2023 and gifted Sinner his first Slam.
But it was the Nadal loss in 2022 that broke Medvedev’s heart. He had poured his pain at the press conference. Enough was enough, he couldn’t keep the angst of being unpopular, for no fault of his, inside him any longer.
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Rudest blow
“Today a kid stopped dreaming,” he would say. “From now on I’m playing for myself, for my family, to provide for my family, for people that trust in me, of course for all the Russians because I feel a lot of support there. If there is a tournament on hard courts in Moscow, before Roland Garros or Wimbledon, I’m going to go there even if I miss Wimbledon or Roland Garros or whatever. The kid stopped dreaming. The kid is going to play for himself. That’s it. That’s my story.”
That didn’t melt many hearts. After winning a tough five-setter at US Open once, where he used the constant heckling from the stands to motivate himself, Medvedev would use subtle sarcasm to belittle the partisan crowd. “If you were not here, guys, I would probably lose the match because I was so tired…. I want all of you to know when you sleep tonight I won today because of you,” he said.
The star-obsessed hecklers had killed the compulsive entertainer in Medvedev. Where are those who used to support the underdog and outlier?
One-of-a-kind
Medvedev stands out on the circuit. He doesn’t travel with an entourage, nor does he have a role model – “they ask me 200 times but my answer will always be the same … ‘I don’t have an idol, I just want to be myself’.”
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He has a unique playing style. For several decades now, players have banked on top-spin to play percentage tennis. It helps them to clear the net with a safe margin and also makes the ball climb after bouncing. But Medvedev is a throwback to the wooden racket, he has the flattest strokes on the tour.
Medvedev stomped Djokovic’s Calendar Slam bid in 2021 at the US Open. (Reuters)
He also has a very practical method to deal with the modern-day heavy top-spinners. He stands way too far from the baseline so by the time the ball reaches him, it is reasonably down and at the perfect height to hit his flat strokes. Medvedev also comes up with unusual angles. He knows several routes to send the ball racing past the sidelines or to set-up the winner that kisses the baseline precisely where he wants.
His rival Stefanos Tsitsipas summed up the degree of difficulty in facing the odd ball tennis player. “He has a very weird game. It’s very sloppy, but a good sloppy … He has this completely different way of playing, flat and low, without giving you much angle to work with. It can be very disturbing to play against him. He can make you miss without understanding why you missed.”
The world needs to make an effort, to try to understand and appreciate a very important tennis player of our times. He is the first 90s-born player to beat Djokovic in a Slam final. And just when you thought Medvedev would finally have his time, Alcaraz would have his breakout year in 2023 and soon Sinner would emerge.
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Medvedev is a topic for a PhD, someone needs to sit with this ‘in-betweener’ to get a first-hand account of how the two great generations played the sport. In a different geopolitical vintage, the mercurial Marat Safin was appreciated for his combustions and not blanket-ly cancelled for being Russian. Maybe, if Medvedev were born in a different era, or probably in a different country too, he would have got his due.
Medvedev stomped Djokovic’s Calendar Slam bid in 2021 at the US Open. (Reuters)