The debate over whether tennis should shrink best-of-five sets down to best-of-three at the majors traces back to recent comments from new Tennis Australia chief executive Andrew Abdo. He floated the idea of experimenting with shorter formats in the initial rounds till the quarterfinals. The Australian Open itself was swift to put that speculation to bed and came out with a clear statement that five-set tennis will continue through 2027, but the conversation has continued among the tennis world and with players now being directly asked about their stance.

The former world No. 1 Daniil Medvedev became the latest to weigh in this week, and his answer was more layered than most. 

“I think definitely takes away from the history of Grand Slams,” he said in the Beijing press conference. “But since I was young, I said, look, I prefer three sets. So if you ask me, let’s play three. I’m okay to play five as well. I follow the lead. Someone one day decides to make it three till quarters or all the time, I will be okay with it. If it’s still five, I’m okay with it. I think it was also fun before when it was five for Masters 1000 events, but I don’t think we should bring it back. I’m just a player. I play. I’ll always try to do my best no matter how many sets there are.”

The seven-time Grand Slam champion Carlos Alcaraz, for his part, has been firmly against any change at all, arguing in Tokyo last week that dropping to best-of-three “would be killing the legacy of the Grand Slams.”

Medvedev’s relationship with five-set tennis is a complicated one, which makes his neutral stance understandable. He carries a 10-14 record in five-set matches across his career, whereas the Spaniard possesses an impeccable record of 15-2. 

However, those 10 wins include some of the most memorable matches the Russian has ever played in his career. He rallied from two sets behind to beat Zverev in the 2024 Australian Open semi-final and Sinner in the Wimbledon quarter-final that same year, breaking the tournament’s record for five-set matches in a single major during the Open Era.

Where his season stands heading into a familiar Beijing rematch

Medvedev shows up to this discussion on a high note. He claimed the Hangzhou title last week, beating Andrey Rublev 7-5, 6-4 for his third trophy of the season and 24th of his career. The victory also pushed his hard-court title tally to 22, tying him with John McEnroe for 11th-most in the Open Era.

He then advanced to the round of 16 at the China Open, beating qualifier Pablo Carreno Busta 6-4, 6-2 in the opening round, and now will face Jan-Lennard Struff, who had beaten him in straight sets in the third round at Wimbledon a few months earlier. Medvedev is 8-2 in the overall head-to-head with the German, and 2-0 in hard court matches, but that Wimbledon defeat remains the most recent chapter between the two, giving this rematch an extra edge. Beijing has been kind to the Russian, who reached the final in 2023 and the semi-finals in both 2024 and 2025.

The bigger question of reducing the majors to three sets is stripping away the opportunity to make those glorious comebacks- the capacity to trail by two sets and still be able to find a way back. A shorter format simply does not allow that, and Grand Slams have produced matches on the basis of that format which tennis fans will talk about forever. Whether that’s the 2008 Wimbledon final or 2012 Australian Open final or 2019 Wimbledon final, or the modern-era epic 2025 French Open final. 

Masters 1000 finals themselves were run as best-of-five up until 2007 before the tour switched to best-of-three in the following year. It was done primarily for scheduling and broadcasting convenience, not out of any complaints about the format’s lack of drama. 

Stripping that same endurance test out of the majors, where it has survived intact since the Open Era began, would reduce the sport’s biggest events to looking like any other stop on tour. It is difficult to think of many truly iconic Grand Slam matches that did not, at some point, go the distance.