Five years after his iconic on-court rant, the 2021 US Open champion has become the sport’s most quotable player and the media’s favorite storyteller.
NEW YORK—To be a fan of Daniil Medvedev is to know that match days involve multiple performances. There’s the match itself, and then there’s the running commentary, which occurs both on and off court. It’s appointment listening any time the former world No. 1 is in range of a microphone, for the mind of Medvedev is always boiling.
“It’s like tea,” Medvedev said at the US Open Thursday night. “It just comes out, comes out even if I don’t want it. Sometimes it’s frustration. Sometimes with good emotions. It just boils.”
He first boiled over in 2019, when a then 23-year-old Medvedev treated an acrimonious Louis Armstrong Stadium crowd to his now-famous line: “I want all of you to know when you sleep tonight, I won because of you.”
Medvedev paired the clearly sarcastic line with incredible physicality, waving his arms like a car dealership inflatable and seeming to bask in the boos.
“That night was one of the best for sure in terms of my tennis,” Medvedev recalled. “I mean, to be able to win this match was unbelievable because when I did the bad gesture… which, yeah, I deserved the hate or the boos this moment…I managed to win the match with Feliciano playing unbelievable this day. He was playing unreal, and I managed to win it and be in the final. That’s where in a way my Grand Slam career started because before I think I was never even in quarters.
“There are some things in my career I’m not happy of, but this interview was probably my best ever after the match,” he added with a laugh. “I absolutely, absolutely love it. If people want to celebrate, I’m there for it.”
I don’t really like headlines, but when I’m on the court, my mind is boiling, constantly boiling. Like sometimes it’s frustration. Sometimes with good emotions. It’s like tea. It just comes out, comes out even if I don’t want it. It just boils.
Five years later, he was on the same court giving less WWE villain and more Marvelous Mr. Medvedev, hamming it up and equating the atmosphere—somewhat bafflingly—to an Italian restaurant.
“The food is great, the aftertaste is great but your head is like, so noisy,” he said after finishing off Hungary’s Fabian Marozsan in straight sets. “All the match I was like, ‘Try to focus! Try to focus!’ It was a fun feeling.”
Not every joke can land, but much like his attritional on-court style Medvedev has won over the tennis world with an impressive commitment to the bit, employing absurdist sarcasm both to diffuse his own inner tension and air various grievances.
Simply put, a Medvedev match day is a Festivus for the rest of us.
Enough is enough. I’m out… #DontBeFineWithIt #Pepperstone #Ad @DaniilMedwed pic.twitter.com/MAixkETv6l
— Pepperstone (@PepperstoneFX) August 16, 2024
“Sometimes when I’m not happy about something,” Medvedev reasoned. “Just be a bit sarcastic and a bit humoristic, but not too much because too much sarcasm is not good also. It can make a little bit headline if you want it to be a headline, but I usually try to not do it on purpose because I am someone I don’t like headlines, to be honest.”
But Medvedev certainly enjoys the spotlight, whether for calling attention to the slowness of the BNP Paribas Open’s hard courts, reading an over-enthusiastic fan, or complaining about the extreme heat conditions at last year’s US Open.
“One player is going to die and they are going to see,” he darkly quipped in the middle of quarterfinal encounter with childhood friend Andrey Rublev. Together, the two came up in an environment that nurtured Medvedev’s scrappier instincts.
When I will finish my career, I will have some good legacy in terms of titles and good memories on court and for sure some iconic moments like on the microphone, et cetera. I like to speak. I have no problem with it.
“When it was under-12 years old and you play the matches without referee, that’s brutal,” he explained, effortlessly turning a story about practice ethics into an anecdote about the unforgiving junior circuit, “You think the guy cheated, and then he plays a ball in the middle, and you say, ‘Out!’ A lot of stories like this.
“Tennis under 12 is brutal. It prepares you mentally. It’s much tougher than ATP Tour.”
That may explain why, for Medvedev’s efforts to sand down his sharper edges, he can still transcend comedy into drama—even as he began 2024 with a New Year’s Resolution to be more “Calma.”
“I didn’t manage to do it fully to what I expected,” he said. “It’s okay. It happens. That’s life.
“Sometimes you want to do something, and you manage to do it. Sometimes not. It was up and down. Some moments I did, and some moments…I’m not going to name them, but, yeah, for different reasons I didn’t manage to do it. But different reasons is more like excuses, but yeah, that’s how life is.
“Yeah, many, many times in my life when I give myself a goal, a promise, I manage to do it, but sometimes not. So, I say honestly no, but I will try again. But entertainment is going to be there all the time, of course.”
Medvedev hasn’t always appreciated his own memeability, like when he mocked Holger Rune for a perceived injustice by hiking up his shorts in a decidedly unflattering imitation..
“The thing is that we’re living in such a world now with social media, this is probably this is going to be there for like, I don’t know, 10 years,” he sighed back in March. “And the good points that we had, they were amazing, gonna be in one day no one remembers.”
He took a different stance this week, back where he has played his best tennis and uttered his most memorable one-liners. For someone not known for particularly aesthetic tennis, Medvedev is coming to embrace the highlight reels he’s creating all the same.
“When I will finish my career, I will have some good legacy in terms of titles and good memories on court and for sure some iconic moments like on the microphone, et cetera. I like to speak. I have no problem with it.”
