Daniil Medvedev at Wimbledon 2024 / Clive Brunskill/GettyImages
Daniil Medvedev seemed to lose his poise in his Wimbledon match against Carlos Alcaraz and was issued a code violation.
Daniil Medvedev can be a divisive figure, and he likely knows it. Some players, such as Alexander Zverev, seem to get annoyed with they think are the Russian playing silly games in matches. A strangely-timed bathroom break that lasts for a bit? Every player does that from time to time, right?
Medvedev also has a very dry sense of humor that people either get or they don’t. He is funny, but some might find him irritating. There is a great likelihood that he does not care either way.
Against Carlos Alcaraz in the Wimbledon semifinals, though, he might have crossed the proverbial line. On a point that resulted in a critical break of service for the Russian, Alcaraz hit a ball that landed just on Medvedev’s side of the net. The Russian raced to get the ball and hit it back toward the Spaniard. The chair umpire ruled that the ball had bounced twice, though, so the point went to Alcaraz.
Daniil Medvedev explains issue between him and chair umpire at Wimbledon
To be fair, on replay, it was clear that the ball did bounce twice. The Spaniard should have been awarded the point and, therefore, the game. There was little time between the second bounce and when Medvedev hit the ball, however, so there is a chance the Russian did think the ball hit just once.
After the chair umpire made their decision, the Russian walked to his chair but appeared to be muttering obscenities toward the umpire. She got out of her chair, met with a tournament official and it was decided that the Russian would receive a code violation. He was close to being defaulted for the perceived abuse and probably should have been.
In his post-match press conference, Medvedev stated he was not speaking English and was instead talking in his native Russian. Fair enough, though it did seem it was extremely clear he was saying not-so-kind words in English on the replay. He might have had reasons to be peeved.
As he said in his press conference, the same chair umpire had ruled a double bounce against him at the 2022 French Open against Marin Cilic, only the ball had bounced once. The Russian lost that match as well.
Medvedev said, “I don’t know if it was double bounce or not. I thought no. That was tricky. The thing is that once long ago Roland Garros against (Marin) Cilic I lost, and she didn’t see that was one bounce. So I had this in my mind. I thought, again, against me.”
