Legend has it that Bill Tilden, the great American champion who won seven US Open titles in the 1920s, would step up to the line with five tennis balls in his hand and thump down four aces before nonchalantly tossing away the spare ball. Daniil Medvedev is cut from a very different cloth, but his opponents must feel much the same as Tilden’s once did.
Medvedev landed nearly three-quarters of his first serves against Britain’s Dan Evans, winning 84% of those points and firing a total of 13 aces. He did not drop a single point on serve in the third set. Evans, appearing in the last 16 of the US Open for the first time in his career, had no answer to firepower of such magnitude, and the disproportionate pressure Medvedev’s excellence placed on his own delivery drew his progress in New York to an abrupt halt.
“The serve for me is the thing I think is a bit underrated,” said Evans, the 24th seed, after his 6-3, 6-4, 6-3 defeat. “He goes through his service games very quickly. Everyone knows how well he moves. But I think his serve, and how he goes from deep to up the court so quick, is another very difficult thing to see on television until you play him.”
Evans was outclassed in every department. With Medvedev’s serve all but impregnable, Evans’ hopes of reaching a first major quarter-final rested on his ability to protect his own delivery. That, however, is easier said than done against one of the game’s best returners, and in the fourth game a sumptuous backhand pass from the world No 2 brought up the first break points of the match. A double fault followed from Evans, and from there it was to be an uphill struggle for the Briton. It will be for most players against the Russian.
Medvedev had warm words for his vanquished opponent. “He’s a top player for many years already, so I knew I had to keep my focus from start to finish,” said the second seed, who faces Botic Van De Zandschulp in the last eight after the Dutch qualifier beat Diego Schwartzman in five sets. “I was serving good. I was trying to change up the game, mix up the game, and I’m really happy that I beat such a tough opponent with that score, and with that much energy left.”
Energy was not a commodity to which Evans could lay any great claim. Having contracted Covid-19 before the Olympics, he came into the US Open short of matches and had to fight back from two sets down to beat Alexei Popyrin in a fifth-set tiebreak in the previous round. Yet he had his moments. There was a lovely display of variety off the backhand, the Briton building on a sequence of deep, skidding slices with a seamless switch to topspin as he drew his opponent from side to side, until one final elegant roll of the wrist produced a down-the-line drive too hot for Medvedev to handle. There were a couple of sumptuous topspin lobs, the second of which saved a break point early in the second set.
There were rifled forehand winners, some fine work at the net, where he could profitably have spent more time, and a smattering of roundarm overheads that evoked memories of Jimmy Connors. The puzzle for Evans, who was even outdone by Medvedev on the highlights reel when the Russian struck an outrageous forehand winner around the net post, lay in how to parlay these moments into a strategy capable of unsettling his opponent.
It was a problem he never solved. Evans, who desperately needed a good start to the second set, made a dog’s breakfast of his opening service game, and although he managed to get back on level terms five games later, another flurry of errors saw him fall behind again. This time there was to be no reprieve, Medvedev delivering four explosive serves at 5-4 to seal a two-set advantage. Three games later he slammed a forehand return for a winner to break, and the contest was over in all but name.
Medvedev, who lost an epic final to Rafael Nadal at Flushing Meadows two years ago and offered further evidence of his hard-court pedigree by reaching the same stage at this year’s Australian Open, has yet to drop a set in New York. The path to a second US Open final has opened up invitingly after Stefanos Tsipitas and Andrey Rublev were both eliminated from his half of the draw, and his confidence could not be higher after winning 12 of his last 13 matches, a run that has included a first Toronto Masters title and a semi-final in Cincinnati. Medvedev puts his steady improvement down to experience.
“What’s different [to] two years ago, I was in one more slam final, I won three more Masters – all these matches [were] tough matches against tough opponents. Sometimes you come back, sometimes you finish in straight sets. It’s experience. For example, I lost against Novak in Australian Open final. If I have one more grand slam final against him, will I do better? We don’t know. Will I try to do better with the experience I had? For sure.”