Tsitisipas on Medvedev’s Game Style: “I Was Completely Wrong”

By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Wednesday October 9, 2024

The connection between Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas was fairly dangerous from the beginning. Their first assembly at Miami in 2018 went viral due to the dangerous blood, and within the years that adopted it remained fairly frosty.

However lately, because of some high quality time spent on the identical Laver Cup crew, and the knowledge that comes with age, the pair are in a significantly better place.

Tsitsipas spoke of his emotions for the previous World No.1 this week, forward of their spherical of 16 encounter in Shanghai (received by Medvedev, 7-6(3), 6-3 – highlights beneath).

“I contemplate him somebody that I respect on the tour, rather more than I did earlier than,” Tsitsipas mentioned. “We have had some heated issues on the court docket up to now, however I feel these issues have resolved themselves over time, and clearly we additionally had the time to talk about these issues and have a standard understanding of why these items occur.”

26-year-old Tsitsipas says it’s higher to place the dangerous blood within the rearview. Right here’s how he explains it.

“I all the time wish to resolve issues like that, I do not wish to depart them,” he mentioned. “It took some time, clearly, a fairly very long time, however it’s good to type of get it out of the way in which, and ensure our tennis brings peace as a substitute of a battle. It is a battle zone whenever you’re on the market on the court docket attempting to, clearly, struggle your finest and clearly attempt to get the win, however I really feel like tennis ought to unite as a substitute of separate.”

Tsitsipas says that he has gained a terrific appreciation for Medvedev’s tennis over time, and admits that he didn’t all the time see the fantastic thing about the Russian’s sport.

“I feel there are numerous issues that he has introduced into the sport which might be, I might contemplate, fairly unorthodox, as a result of you have not seen numerous gamers up to now, play the way in which that he does,” he mentioned. “Which is, actually, after eager about it, up to now I may need mentioned some imply stuff about his sport, however after really eager about these issues, I feel I used to be fully incorrect in that.

“There’s numerous attention-grabbing issues in his sport that he brings which might be very totally different from different gamers. I feel that is what makes him distinctive as a participant, since you do not see gamers like him fairly often, and it offers tennis one other dimension when it comes to how it may be performed and the way in another way it may be crafted. So, that is undoubtedly one thing that he has provided thus far to the sport, and I feel numerous generations are going to do not forget that.”