Paris (AFP)
Three tournaments for two finals, in Washington and Montreal, and a title on Sunday at the 1000 Masters of Cincinnati: after such a preparation on hard, Daniil Medvedev will he THE player of the younger generation who will deprive Djokovic, Nadal or Federer of next Grand Slam tournament?
The Russian does in any case the US Open (August 26-September 8) having won more games this season than every member of the infernal trio.
On the court, he recalls, especially by this way of waiting for the opposing service almost right, shoulders and snowshoe very slightly ahead, his compatriot Andrey Chesnokov, pioneer of Russian tennis who won the Monte Carlo tournament in 1990 , at the time under the Soviet banner.
But the nonchalance of the young is much less profound than that of the old.
Like Kyrgios, Paire or Fognini, Medvedev is in fact prone to mental stalemate and the externalization of his frustration with the minute destruction of his snowshoes.
"I was crazy," he admits. But he is being treated: for months he has resorted to a psychologist. And work pays, since it gives way less and less to temptation on the courts.
"I knew, even when I was a junior, that it did not do me any good, but I could not control it, so I worked a lot on it and I'm better at controlling it," he says. he in French.
- Monegasque resident -
It may be worth a deficit of charisma compared to his fellow irascible, but the results, there is more match: the 23-year-old Russian dominates. A Monegasque resident who trains in Cannes under the direction of Gilles Cervara, the 1.98m grand echalas is now 5th in the world with, in 2019, 44 ATP victories, including 31 on the hard, and 2 titles (Sofia and Cincinnati).
From the point of view of these statistics, he is even the best of the year ahead of Djokovic, Nadal and Federer. But he misses a title in Grand Slam when the three "old" do not finish collecting them.
With his not very academic technique, made of ultra-loose preparations that do not prevent his two-handed defeat to be particularly devastating, Medvedev has not shone in the first three major 2019: eliminations in the 8th finals at the Australian Open , in the first round at Roland-Garros and at the third at Wimbledon. But he surprised Cincinnati, including Djokovic in half and Goffin in the final, with a lethal service including second balls.
- Hunting board -
At the US Open, he will play on his favorite surface and can rely psychologically on a sacred hunt. Since the beginning of the year, he has beaten Djokovic twice (Monte-Carlo and Cincinnati), Thiem (Montreal), Nishikori (Barcelona), Tsitsipas (Monte-Carlo), Khachanov (Montreal), all members of the current top 10. In the top of the basket, only Federer and Nadal resisted him in 2019: the Swiss beat him in 8th in Miami and the Spaniard, absent in Cincinnati, crushed him in the final of the Masters 1000 of Montreal. He has not yet faced Zverev or Bautista Agut.
Despite his great career in Monte-Carlo opening season on clay, where he had reached for the first time the semi-finals of a Masters 1000, he had stressed feeling "still more happy to play hard "only on the ocher. "It's not even the results, but just that I feel better tactics, I'm having fun," he explained.
Still out of the top 60 global in August 2018, he was in the top 20 two months later after his titles at Winston-Salem and Tokyo. A year later, he is one of the most serious outsiders of the US Open.
What delight the Russian press as the daily Sport Express sees in him, Monday, a player "sometimes clumsy but very stable, able to destroy the game of any opponent". Provided that his physique - and his mentality.
© 2019 AFP