Athletistic / Tennis. In 2023, Beijing hosted a men’s tennis tournament in the ATP-500 category for the first time in four seasons. This time he assembled a very interesting company, but the Russian Daniil Medvedev and the Italian Jannik Sinner reached the final. These tennis players now occupy the third and seventh places in the ranking, and the match therefore promised to be extremely interesting.

Until today, Daniil has met the Italian six times, and each time the Russian has won. In 2023, we expected the third face-to-face between Medvedev and Sinner. This season Daniil can boast of excellent results. Last month he reached the final of the US Open, where he lost to Serbian Novak Djokovic, and has already won the Masters in Rome (Italy) and Miami (USA), and also won tournaments in Doha (Qatar), Dubai (UAE) and Rotterdam (Netherlands). It was at the final of the tournament in Rotterdam that the first meeting of these tennis players took place this season, and therefore the Italian had something to prove not only to himself, but also to his opponent.

In Beijing, Medvedev’s path to the final was more difficult than that of his opponent: the 27-year-old Muscovite had to play three matches with opponents from the top 15 of the ATP rankings at the previous stages. Daniil faced each of them in straight sets and in the semi-final, in a meeting with German Alexander Zverev, he made only one unforced error, which looked absolutely fantastic. Medvedev still lost his only match during the tournament in the capital of the Celestial Empire, but that did not prevent him from reaching the final.

Sinner began playing in Beijing with opponents from the fourth ten in the world rankings, but then he played and beat former world tennis leader Carlos Alcaraz, defeating him in straight sets and dropping only one game in the second match. It followed that Daniel could not underestimate Yannick, despite the history of their clashes.

From the start of the match, the Italian showed his spirit and took the Russian’s serve. During the first six games of the first set, the opponents managed to break twice. In the remaining time of the first game, there were no breaks and Sinner was more successful in the tiebreaker.

The next set took place in a similar scenario, but this time the tennis players did it without a wave of breaks. In the middle of the set, a funny and significant moment occurred: in four consecutive matches, tennis players were able to take only one point on reception. Each of the opponents valued their serve and acted in a dominant style in their “games”. As a result, it was again a tiebreaker. Unfortunately, luck was not on Medvedev’s side that day. He again lost the tie-break against Sinner and allowed the Italian to beat him for the first time in his career.

Medvedev failed to score maximum points in the rankings in Beijing and missed the opportunity to get closer to Alcaraz in the fight for second place in the world rankings. But the Russian has no time to worry: the Masters has already started on October 4 in Shanghai, and soon after, another “thousand” awaits tennis players in Paris. By the end of the season, Daniil can significantly improve his ranking points and even get ahead of Alcaraz, to whom he is currently just over 1,200 points lower.

Nikita Serbakov, Athletistic


@sportru