The Russian Daniil Medvedev, third in the ATP world ranking, defeated the German Alexander Zverev (6) this Friday by 5-7, 3-6, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (5), 6-3 and advanced to the final of the Australian Tennis Open in which he will face the Italian Jannik Sinner, executioner of champion Novak Djokovic.
Medvedev achieved victory after four hours and 22 minutes of play and will go for his first title in Melbourne after losing the 2021 finals to the Serbian and the 2022 finals to the Spanish Rafael Nadal. Sinner, fourth seed, defeated Djokovic, world number one, 6-1, 6-2, 6-7 (6), 6-3 in three hours and 26 minutes and ended his long winning streak in the ” Australian major”, where they had not lost since the round of 16 of the 2008 edition.
Medvedev completed a comeback for the fourth time after losing the first two sets of a Grand Slam match. The first of them was against the Croatian Marin Cilic at Wimbledon 2021, the second against the Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime at the Australian Open 2022 and the third against the Finnish Emil Ruusuvuori in this edition of the oceanic tournament.
Qualification seemed far away for the Russian when he committed a double fault in the tie-break of the fourth set, which left Zverev two points away from his first final in Melbourne. But the German trembled and Medvedev accelerated to equalize 2-2 after having had no options in the face of the seamless play in the first two sets of the tennis player who eliminated Carlos Alcaraz in the previous round.
The emotional blow was too hard for Zverev, who was inferior in the decisive set. “I was a little lost and in the third set I said to myself, ‘I want to at least be proud of myself and if I lose I will fight to the end in every match,'” Medvedev said. “I felt physically tired, but I told myself I had to be more aggressive, if it didn’t work, I would have tried it. It worked, I started hitting better and serving better,” he added.
Sinner, 22, will play in his first Grand Slam final after eliminating the ten-time Australian champion, Djokovic, who had a series of 33 consecutive wins at Melbourne Park. “I was surprised by my poor level. Without a doubt I played one of the worst Grand Slam matches, at least that I remember. It’s not a very pleasant feeling to have played this way, but I give all the credit to (Jannik) Sinner because he did everything better than me in all aspects of the game,” Djokovic admitted in the post-match press conference.
Medvedev and Sinner will play their tenth match on the ATP circuit, the first corresponding to a large tournament. The Muscovite leads him 6-3 on aggregate but the Italian won the last three matches last year, the finals in Beijing, Vienna and the semis of the ATP Finals.
This Saturday, for the women’s team, starting at 5:30 in Argentina, the final will be played between the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka (2nd) and the Chinese Qinwen Zheng (15th).
2024-01-27 03:01:00
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