Danlil Medvedev is my favorite tennis player. There was a time that he was the world number 1 and was a favorite to win almost any tournament that he was in. He has won almost all of the biggest tournaments but about 2-3 years ago he started slipping and went so far as to fall to number 18 in the rankings. This is nothing to scoff at of course and he has become extremely wealthy in his professional run. But it is kind of sad to see someone that you really enjoy watching just start to get not be great, start to get eliminated by players you have never heard of in the first or 2nd round of major tournaments. The losing skid is over though, and I hope that he can keep the momentum going into the future because I would like to see a turnaround story for him.
There's a lot of people out there that are going to downplay this victory because it wasn't a major. Some are even pushing to make is sound even less consequential with many calling it "3rd tier."
The tournament is the Almaty Open and it takes place in Kazakhstan of all places. When some people try to downplay this tournament I guess I can understand why because when you think of tennis, Kazakhstan doesn't exactly spring to the front of your mind.
Some people ask me why I like him so much and there are a lot of reasons. For one thing, he is very tall and long and this makes for a very unusual style of play. His reach is massive and because he is so much taller than many of his opponents he can get angles on serves that are just insane.
Another reason that I like him is because he looks like adult Stewie from Family guy.
Here are some other reasons though and some of them are mildly political and if that make you upset maybe stop being so sensitive.
Danlil Medvedev is Russian and because of the conflict there has been a bunch of pressure unfairly put on him to publicly denounce his own country or his own country's leaders. There were attempts to ban him and anyone else from Russia or Belarus from even being allowed to participate in ATP tournaments but this was met with a great deal of backlash from the tennis community. He is constantly asked by the press what is opinion is about his country's politics and he politely declines to talk about it at all. I mean look.... the dude is a multi-millionaire but I'm pretty sure some very bad things could happen to him if he were to say nasty things about Putin or other high ranking Russian leaders.
Plus, what difference does it make? What, are things going to improve as far as the war is concerned because a lanky tennis player has an opinion? It's so stupid for anyone to ask this of him but I guess the press are just morons. There have been calls by some blowhards to have his sponsorships removed based solely on his nationality as well. Because I hate all of this political crap invading sport that actually made me like the guy more
he's had a bad couple of years too and his "meltdowns" after losses or even during matches show that this guy is really struggling to keep it together.
He recently fired his coach and has been working with a new team and I look forward to seeing what he can do. I would love to see him become one of the best again because this so rarely happens in any sport. To go from number 1 to number 18 then to rise back to 14 (his current rank) is pretty great, but I would love it if the guy has some more in the tank and can be a real player in future tournaments. Almaty might not be one of the top tournaments, but there is plenty of talent there.
let's see what the guy does next. At the moment he hasn't announced any plans for what tournament he may enter next, but I will be watching it, that if for sure.