Fifth seed knocked out as his opponent becomes first Australian to reach quarter-finals in Paris for 20 years
Daniil Medvedev clarified his satisfaction in diverging from Carlos Alcaraz’s trajectory following his defeat to the Spanish player at the ATP Finals.
Daniil Medvedev has confessed that he’s “really happy” despite following a different path than the likes of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. The world No 3 lost to Alcaraz in Friday’s round-robin match at the ATP Finals but had already qualified for the semi-final. Reflecting on his young rivals’ success, Medvedev admitted that he liked his journey even though it took him several years to achieve what Alcaraz did as a teenager.
Alcaraz managed to join Medvedev in the semi-final of the ATP Finals by beating the 27-year-old in their last round-robin match of the week. The Spaniard got his revenge after losing to Medvedev in the US Open semi-final, downing him 6-4 6-4 to come out as the winner of the Red Group with Medvedev in second place.
The world No 2 is one of two 20-year-olds who qualified for the ATP Finals alongside Holger Rune. It meant that this year was the first since 2000 with two players aged 20 and under making it to the season-ending championships. While Rune failed to get out of the opposing Green Group, 22-year-old Jannik Sinner also advanced to the semi-final where he will take on Medvedev.
With plenty of bright young stars already in the world’s top eight, Medvedev reflected on the next generation and admitted that he was happy with his own path even though it took him a while to achieve the same success. “If I compare [them] to myself, the difference is I started playing top tennis maybe at 23, I think I was. 2019,” the 2021 US Open champion said.
“They started doing it at, like, 19. Pretty impressive. At 19 I was probably 600 in the world. That’s impressive.” Like Alcaraz, Medvedev has already won a Major title and reached No 1 in the world but he achieved both feats after turning 25 while the Spaniard was a teenager when he lifted his first Slam title and ascended to the top of the rankings.
However, the 27-year-old was happy to battle to the top, adding: “That’s also why I like my journey. I was not like them. I had to slowly, slowly dig my way up. Now I’m here and I’m really happy.”
While Medvedev thought Alcaraz, Rune and Sinner were among the ‘Next Gen’ of players, he still thought that they were the present – and that they could be joined at the top by some other promising talents. “For sure right now we can call them Next Gen. I mean, they’re already here, but they’re still super young,” he explained.
“Jannik, Holger and Carlos at this moment at the top. For sure Ben Shelton, Arthur Fils, guys like this, they can also come there.” Medvedev will now face Sinner in Saturday’s semi-final in a bid to reach the championship match at the ATP Finals. The Russian leads their head-to-head 6-2 but Sinner has won their last two meetings, which both came in the last couple of months.
