At the Australian Open on Friday, Daniil Medvedev persevered through yet another demanding five-set encounter. He overcame Alexander Zverev 5-7, 3-6, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (5), 6-3, and advanced to the Melbourne final.
In the Australian Open finals, the Russian is down 0–2. He will play Jannik Sinner of Italy on Sunday after the Italian won the second semifinal in four sets against 10-time tournament champion Novak Djokovic.
Zverev, the sixth seed, dominated at the net and converted all three of his break opportunities in the opening set. He was very aggressive. In the second set, he won 17 of 19 net points by continuing to block Medvedev’s shots at the net.
Third-seeded Medvedev defeated Zverev in a close third set, winning 84 percent of the points on his first serve. This continued until the fourth set, where Medvedev made ninety percent of his first serve points (19 out of 21), striking fourteen winners to only six unforced errors.
In the decisive set, Zverev lost his composure as Medvedev broke his serve twice. There were only eight winners and twenty-one unforced errors in the set for the German.
“I think we both didn’t play that well in the first set,” Medvedev admitted after the match. “Compared to the first set, I felt like I played a little bit better in the second. I didn’t have any opportunities on his serve, but he played really well—6-3, two breaks. Though I was a little disoriented at the time, in the third set I declared that even if I lost, I would still be proud of myself. I’m going to fight until the very end because I want to win and if I lose, I lose.”
The four-hour, eighteen-minute semifinal saw Medvedev go to 12-7 all-time versus Zverev.
After going the full distance in his quarterfinal match against Hubert Hurkacz of Poland, ranked ninth, and in his second-round battle against Emil Ruusuvuori of Finland, which was played until nearly four in the morning, Medvedev was playing in his third five-set match in Melbourne.
Zverev started to feel tired, according to Medvedev.
“I felt physically tired at one point during the third set,” stated Medvedev. I missed it when I was staring at him. I reasoned that I wouldn’t be able to run as long as we had in the first several sets—40+ rallies—so I decided to be more aggressive and try something else if it didn’t work out. It got to work.
“I started to serve better and made better shots than I had previously. I got really lucky at 5-5 on return in the tiebreak. The drop shot against the wind with the back spin was unintentional, but the slice was. It’s necessary to be fortunate sometimes, and I’m lucky today.”
Although Sinner has defeated Medvedev three times in his career, the Italian has won the last three.
Sinner’s triumph against Djokovic, who hadn’t dropped a set in Melbourne since 2018, impressed Medvedev.
The U.S. Open in 2021 was Medvedev’s sole Grand Slam victory. “I need to recover well and be 100 percent on Sunday,” he stated.
