Experience is no guarantee of success, but it’s a useful thing to have. Such was Daniil Medvedev’s thinking ahead of his last-four showdown with Felix Auger-Aliassime, and his judgment proved as unerringly accurate as one of his carefully measured groundstrokes as the Russian reached his second US Open final in three years.
Serving at 5-3, one point away from levelling the first major semi-final of his career, Auger-Aliassime had every reason to feel encouraged by his night’s work. Having lost the opening set on a single break to the world’s second-best player, the gifted 21-year-old Canadian had fought his way back into contention.
One set point had come and gone after an extended rally ended with Medvedev spearing a backhand winner down the line, but now Auger-Aliassime had another and was bearing down with intent on a volley. He punched it into the bottom of the net. Two points later he was broken, and the match was as good as over, Medvedev closing out a 6-4, 7-5, 6-2 victory.
“Against a player like that, you don’t really have room for mistakes, room for losing your focus, which I did at the end of the second,” said Auger-Aliassime, the first Canadian to contest a US Open semi-final in the tournament’s history. “He took advantage of it and I didn’t get another chance after that.”
Right there, that’s the value of experience. As he revealed afterwards, Medvedev’s only thought at set point down had been to get the ball back in play. He recognised the potential turning point, and was not about to gift his opponent parity with a cheap error.
Auger-Aliassime, on the other hand, was grappling with problems of a more fundamental nature. Only he knows why, rather than moving in for a makeable backhand volley, he instead opted to take the ball on his forehand side. Whatever the reason, it demanded an adjustment to his body position that cost him a vital fraction of a second, turning a relatively straightforward shot into a marginally more difficult one.
“[It was a] strange match, a little bit, in the second set, where I think everybody felt like it’s going to be one set all, and you never know where the match is going to go,” said Medvedev during his on-court interview with Brad Gilbert. “Managed to save the set points. He missed one volley, I made one good point. And the match turned around completely.”
Medvedev added: “He had two set points, so the only thing I was thinking was: ‘Don’t make an ace on the line, please, and I’m going to make you play.’ At 5-4, I knew that now is a very important point of the match where I have to just do everything at my best, even more than before, because that’s the moment where I could break him mentally – and that’s what happened.”
Auger-Aliassime is a richly gifted shot-maker who has made steady progress since appointing Toni Nadal to his coaching team in December, reaching his first major quarter-final at Wimbledon and going one round better in New York. Yet his game remains a work in progress. In time, his shot selection in key moments will improve. For now, he has a wondrous array of options but not always a clear sense of how to deploy them.
These are issues Medvedev simply does not have. Few players have a more clearly defined sense of what they are about. Throw down the heat on serve, retreat deep behind the baseline to return, make balls, repeat. There is a lot more to the unorthodox Russian’s game than that, of course, as he demonstrated with a remarkable whipcrack forehand that flew around the net post for the most outrageous of winners. But that is the essence of it.
This was Medvedev’s third successive appearance in the last four at Flushing Meadows; he will now contest his second final in New York, where he lost over five unforgettable sets to Rafael Nadal two years ago, and his third major final in all. The Russian believes that experience can once again stand him in good stead.
“I have the experience of two finals of slams that can help me,” said Medvedev, who will play either top seed Novak Djokovic or world No 4 Alexander Zverev in Sunday’s final. “For me, experience is a key … playing against Rafa [in 2019], I want to win everything I play, but I was kind of the underdog. Let’s be honest, I was already happy being in the final. It was [my] first great breakthrough. I just won a Masters, which was already huge. I was in the final. So everything was a positive, which helped me to play good. I was not feeling like it’s a must to win.
“If I play Novak, he has 20 slams, it’s not a must, but I want to do it even more. That’s normal. The more you lose something, the more you want to win it, the more you want to gain it and take it. I lost two finals. I want to win the third one. That’s tennis, we have two players, only one going to win. You never know what’s going to happen, but I’m going to try more than I did the first two times.”
Were he to face Djokovic, who would complete the first calendar year grand slam in more than half a century should he win a men’s record 21st major in New York, endeavour will be the minimum requirement. Yet he would relish the chance to go down in history as the man who halted the Serb’s assault on the record books.
“If I can make this, I’d probably be in the history books somewhere, not letting him do this. But I don’t really care about it. I think it’s more about him, that it affects him.”
It would nonetheless be an experience to rank with Medvedev’s most memorable.