Defending champ Daniil Medvedev is aiming to win the same event twice for the first time
“It’s the best start of the season I have ever had,” said Daniil Medvedev after downing Jannik Sinner to lift the trophy at last year’s Miami Open presented by Itau.
The champion at Hard Rock Stadium was not wrong. Medvedev’s title run had improved his record for 2023 to 29-3 after he won a remarkable 24 out of 25 matches won across February and March. His triumph at the ATP Masters 1000 event in Florida, where he had not previously been past the quarter-finals, ultimately proved to be the crowning achievement of one of the most impressive early season runs in ATP Tour history.
Daniil Medvedev won four tournaments across three continents as he responded emphatically after dropping out of the Top 10 of the PIF ATP Rankings for the first time in four years. He won back-to-back titles in Rotterdam, Doha and Dubai, before reaching the championship match at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. After his Miami triumph, he had firmly reestablished himself among the sport’s elite as the World No. 4.
At Hard Rock Stadium, Medvedev dropped just one set across five matches to seal his fifth Master 1000 crown. The way he dismantled Sinner, who had battled past defending champion Carlos Alcaraz in the semi-finals the day before, was a demonstration of the sort of clinical match-winning machine Medvedev had become across those past two months.
“I haven’t won’t such a big title in probably a year and a half,” said Medvedev after his 7-5, 6-3 win earned him a first Masters 1000 trophy since Toronto in 2021. “At the end I was quite shaky. Not even tight, because I’m not scared to win. But still the hands get a little shaky, so the serve is a little bit tougher… I managed to get myself together and close the match.”
Medvedev breezed past Roberto Carballes Baena, Quentin Halys and Christopher Eubanks before overcoming Karen Khachanov in three sets to reach the final showdown with Sinner. His relentless defence, complemented by a booming serve, made him a hard man for his opponents to hit through at Hard Rock Stadium.
Medvedev’s stellar couple of months on hard courts around the world prompted plenty of press-conference questions in Miami about his affinity for the surface. Speaking after his victory against Sinner, he cited an increased ability to pull through tough moments on hard courts as key.
“Generally I love hard courts. I love playing on it,” said Medvedev. “If it would be my choice, it would be only hard courts, but I completely understand that that’s not fair.
“I feel the best at my game on hard courts. Even if I know that I can play well enough on the grass and clay, on hard courts I feel the most fluid. On hard courts I can play not my best tennis but still win the matches. That’s a big difference.”
Just under two months after his Miami win, Medvedev nonetheless delivered his biggest reminder yet that he is anything but a ‘hard-court specialist’. He claimed his sixth Masters 1000 crown, his first tour-level title on clay, at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome.
Last week at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Medvedev moved past the quarter-finals of a Masters 1000 for the first time since his Rome triumph. He fell to Carlos Alcaraz in the championship match for the second straight year in the California desert, but he will still bring plenty of confidence to Miami as he bids to defend his crown.
If he is to triumph again under the Florida sun, Medvedev will also snap one of the ATP Tour’s more remarkable streaks — each one of his 20 tour-level titles has come at a different event.
“It’s a fun fact, a fun story,” Medvedev said last year in Beijing, where he was denied another title in a new city with a loss to Sinner in the final. “Honestly, [it’s] not really extra motivation… I really want to win every time I step on court. In a way, I’m really disappointed that I never managed to [successfully] defend one of my titles.”
As at home on the hard courts of Hard Rock Stadium as any of his rivals, will this year’s Miami Open presented by Itau be the moment when Medvedev finally doubles up?
