Daniil Medvedev lost his fifth final in a row at ATP tournaments.
On Monday night, the Russian lost to Carlos Alcaraz in two sets in the decisive Masters match in Indian Wells.
Before that, he had defeats at the Australian Open, Vienna, Beijing and the US Open, and his last victory dates back to May last year, when Daniil raised the cup over his head in Rome.
On the way to the final in California, the opponents did not pose any unsolvable problems for the world No. 4, although in the third round he had to spend more than two hours on the court in a match with Sebastian Korda.
But after that he confidently beat Grigor Dimitrov and Holger Rune, and in the semi-finals he dealt with the favorite of the local public, Tommy Paul.
This meeting turned out to be perhaps the most difficult from a psychological point of view, as Medvedev lost the opening set with a devastating score of 1:6.
But he successfully handled the pressure, rebuilt his game and managed to take the upper hand in the next two games.
Alcaraz, by the way, also did not do without a shake-up.
He lost a set in the opening match against Matteo Arnaldi, ranked 40th in the world.
But the Spaniard immediately showed that it was an unfortunate mistake, and then took 12 out of 13 games from the enemy.
In the future, he did not leave his opponents a chance, successively knocking out Felix Auger-Aliassime, Fabian Marozhan and Alexander Zverev.
And in the semi-finals, Carlos had a match of his life with Jannik Sinner.
The tennis players fought on the court for more than five hours, but the Italian still suffered his first defeat this season, and the Spaniard reached the final of the Californian tournament for the second time in a row.
A year ago in Indian Wells, he also fought for the title with Medvedev and won a fairly easy victory in two sets.
This time, Daniil was determined to take revenge and finally add to his collection of trophies the last hard “Masters”, which he had never conquered yet.
And the start of the match was more than successful for the Russian.
He immediately broke his serve and then made a break, taking advantage of a series of unforced errors by his opponent.
However, it was not without reason that on the eve of the meeting Alcaraz stated that he knew well how to confront Medvedev.
Already in the third game, he entered the game and earned three break points, which Daniil, fortunately, successfully dealt with and led 3:0.
But the Spaniard improved from play to play and quickly restored parity.
It also played into the favor of the favorite that Daniil’s first serve didn’t fly at all - in the first set he hit only 60%.
And from the second ball he managed to win only 10 points out of 23. At the same time, both showed incredibly entertaining and open tennis, in which there were powerful attacks, shortened shots, sharp transfers, and rescues from seemingly hopeless situations.
With the score 4:4, the Russian had to win back a hidden set point, and he managed to take the game only on the third attempt.
After this, the tennis players consistently took their serves, and the game reached a tiebreaker.
The Spaniard tried to seize the initiative, leading 3:0 right off the bat, but later Daniil managed to make a reverse mini-break, beating Alcaraz with his own weapon - a spectacular dribble after his opponent entered the net.
The score became 5:5, but after that Medvedev did not accept Carlos’s second serve, and in the next play he did not hit the court when transferring along the line, and the set remained with the second racket of the world.
The beginning of the second game was a mirror image of the first: this time Alcaraz led 3:0.
But Medvedev did not have any counterarguments to the Spaniard’s game.
The first serve was still lame, and attacking shots were coming less and less often.
During the entire set, Daniil managed to win only one point with his active actions, while Carlos had eight of them.
It is natural that the final score was devastating - 6:1 in favor of Alcaraz.
Thus, Medvedev extended his streak of failures in finals to five, and 20-year-old Alcaraz repeated the achievement of Boris Becker 36 years ago.
The Spaniard became the second tennis player in history to win two Indian Wells titles before he turned 21.
Carlos will celebrate his next birthday on May 5th.
At the award ceremony, Medvedev noted that this court is good for the second racket of the world.
He also jokingly expressed the hope that someday Alcaraz would allow him to play it at least a little better.
Both tennis players have the Masters in Miami ahead, where Daniil will defend last year’s title.
So far, the Russian, who has 20 trophies on the ATP tour, has never managed to win the same tournament twice.