Daniil Medvedev – “I Would Not Call Myself The Most Relevant Player”

Published 10/24/2019, 8:07 AM EDT

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The ‘new machine man’ of men’s tennis, Daniil Medvedev has recently touched the skies in his career. His recent emergence certainly remarks the ‘new face’ in tennis and probably is the most deserving torch-bearer amongst the young generation of ATP.

“I would not call myself the most relevant player in the world even now,” said Daniel Medvedev. “But of course, I’m glad that I have achieved something in this period of time. If they told me correctly, I am the fifth tennis player to play in six finals in a row. That’s cool”.

This year Daniil Medvedev attained the career-high ranking of World Number four, probably he might conclude the 2019 season as World Number three tennis player provided he does exceptionally well at Rolex Paris Masters 2019 and ATP Finals 2019 and Roger Federer underperforms.

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“Of course, six finals in a row is unexpected, but these are the fruits of the work that I did, so in a sense, I was ready for this. Although in almost all the matches [of recent months] I was delighted with some of my qualities: the level of play, the pitch, the way I pulled out a match that seemed to be lost,” Medvedev said.  

Medvedev’s run to six straight ATP finals including one Grand Slam finals and this season, the Russian is one of the four ATP men to claim the most number of titles this year, which is a total of four ATP titles. 

“If you run too far ahead or imagine something too good, but then it does not come true, you can become depressed and decide that life failed. But at the same time, I do not want to set boundaries and imagine some kind of limit. I always want to achieve the maximum, and I don’t voice specific goals, so as not to look silly if, in the end, they do not coincide with what I’ll do,” Medvedev reflected.

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“I am very calm and judicious in life, but everything changes when I play games, and it does not matter: PlayStation or tennis. You yourself know how I sometimes behave in matches; for some reason, at the moment of adrenaline rush, I have outbursts of anger. I am working to ensure that they are not there. It always surprised me both myself and the people around me: how could such a good boy do such things on the court?” Medvedev continued.

He further elucidated upon the taxing matches at the US Open 2019 as he entered after playing three weeks of unstoppable tennis during the North American summer season.

“So in the second round of the US Open against Dellein, I started to have terrible cramps, and I really almost fell to the court. I went then and thought: well, no luck, there will be the following US Open. But in the end, he managed to pull it out. And there have already been many such matches where I surprised myself,” the Russian added.

He further spoke about the significance of his wife in his tennis career and how things have evolved after marriage.

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“Dasha taught me a lot, showed me how to behave, how to be yourself. I used to do more for others than for myself; I was always very worried that I could offend someone, I always responded to any request. But over the past year, I have redefined priorities because your life is your life, and only you can make it better. So I began to take care of myself more, and it came with getting married, with the realization that my family and my life are more important than others,” Medvedev added.

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The Russian gave his insights from his junior days on the circuit and how strenuous it was to win titles on the junior tour. He treats all his victories equally and he is grateful for all his titles irrespective of his grade.

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“I hate losing since childhood. This does not mean that I have some kind of unbending character – not at all. This quality actually sometimes plays against you, because you think that you can’t lose, and when the game does not go, you start to blame the wind, or the balls, or something else. I’ve gone away from this over the past two or three years and now I understand that sometimes I myself can be to blame,” Medvedev said. 

“It was no easier to win junior titles than professional ones now. The level of the game, of course, was worse, but victories were obtained with the same difficulty, they caused the same joy. So now I can say that the two Masters and the US Open final are the highlights of my career, and when you are on the court, the title [at the ATP 250 tournament in Sofia] is in no way inferior to Shanghai and Cincinnati in emotion,” Medvedev concluded. 

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Mahalakshmi Murali

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Mahalakshmi Murali joined EssentiallySports in 2018 as a tennis author and has gone on to pen more than 1800 engaging articles, probing into various aspects of the sport and its illustrious players. With her expertise on the sport, Mahalakshmi has interviewed stalwarts from the sport such as Serena WIlliams’ coach Patrick Mouratoglou and Kevin Anderson’s physio, Carlos Costa. Equipped with her vast experience and a keen understanding of the sport, Mahalakshmi now co-heads the tennis department.
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