Nick Kyrgios has long marched to the beat of his own drum; only a maverick like Daniil Medvedev would dare follow.
On a night of high drama and high quality at Flushing Meadows, follow Medvedev did – and it cost him his US Open title and No 1 ranking, as Kyrgios claimed a 7-6 (13-11), 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory to reach his first quarter-final at Flushing Meadows.
It was a performance of majesty laced with the occasional moment of madness from the Australian, who saved three set points to come through a compelling first set, inexplicably sat out the second, and staged a bizarre act of self-sabotage early in the third when he illegally rounded the net to volley away a loose ball, denying himself a potentially vital break point.
Kyrgios atoned for that lapse at the first opportunity, however, wresting Medvedev’s next service game from him with the help of two searing crosscourt forehands, and he held firm to continue the remarkable summer surge that has carried him to a first grand slam final at Wimbledon, a second title in Washington, and 20 wins from his past 23 matches.
“This is the last trip before I head back to Australia, so I want to go all the way,” Kyrgios told Patrick McEnroe on court afterwards. “Hopefully it’s possible.”
Increasingly, with Kyrgios, anything feels possible. He had Medvedev under his spell even before the first ball had been struck, the Russian adopting a return position significantly closer to the baseline than normal. The idea, Medvedev later explained, was to deter Kyrgios from following his delivery to the net. That was an understandable impulse, given the incessant net-rushing that carried the Australian to victory when the pair met last month in Montreal, but it also felt like a tacit concession of vulnerability.
The world’s top-ranked player – a status Medvedev will now lose to either Rafael Nadal, Carlos Alcaraz or Casper Ruud next week – might expect his opponents to have to make allowances for his game, rather than vice versa. Yet it has been a complicated season for the Muscovite, who narrowly lost out to Nadal in the Australian Open final, fell to Marin Cilic at Roland Garros shortly after undergoing a hernia operation, and was unable to compete at Wimbledon due to the tournament’s blanket ban on Russian and Belarusian players.
Medvedev’s greatest mistake, however, lay in attempting to play Kyrgios at his own game, a problem that started with a break point he faced at 3-2 in the opening set. Having prodded a lovely off-backhand return to fashion the opportunity, Kyrgios gesticulated wildly to the crowd, revving them up, urging them to show greater energy. Medvedev, quietly seething, went on to screw a forehand approach wide, and in the next game he replied in kind, twice appealing to the stands for support as he broke straight back. Anything you can do.
Anxious not to cede ground in the battle for hearts and minds, however, Medvedev did not stop there. With Kyrgios a break to the good at 2-1 in the fourth set, a return winner earned the Russian a lifeline at 30-40. As he readied himself behind the baseline, Medvedev attempted to stir up the crowd again.
Now it was Kyrgios who became enraged, earning a warning for an audible obscenity before crashing down a huge ace. A primal roar followed. Medvedev, who revealed afterwards that he was “feeling his throat a little bit”, would not threaten again. Kyrgios held for 3-1 and, when he earned a break point in the next game, he stoked the crowd with far greater theatrically than Medvedev – and probably anyone else in the draw – could ever hope to muster. The psychological war was won.
“It was pretty even till the third set, then he got a little bit the better of me,” said Medvedev. “Physically I started feeling little bit worse in the third set, so I think that was a little bit the key. I don’t know how he was. Maybe he was also. Physically I started just feeling a little bit more tired.”
Medvedev compared it afterwards to facing Novak Djokovic or Nadal.
“Played Novak, Rafa, they all play amazing,” said the Russian. “Nick today played kind of their level, in my opinion.”
Whatever the similarity in level, however, Kyrgios remains a world away from those players in mindset. Djokovic and Nadal are winning machines, their combined tally of 43 majors the product of relentless competitive intensity. Aesthetic concerns or thoughts of who might be in the stands barely warrant a second thought in their worldview, certainly not in the heat of battle. Not so Kyrgios, who spoke afterwards of his relief at finally doing himself justice in front of the New York crowd.
“I feel like I’ve been able to showcase,” said the Australian, who will face Karen Khachanov, the 27th seed, in the last eight. “There’s a lot of celebrities here, a lot of important people here watching. I wanted to get on that court and show them I am able to put my head down and play and win these big matches.”
The key, as Kyrgios acknowledged, was a tense and testy opening set in which the chair umpire, Eva Asderaki, frequently found herself in the firing line. Kyrgios complained of being rushed on serve, berating Asderaki for what he felt was an overzealous deployment of the time clock, while Medvedev took exception to the overexuberance of the Australian’s box, claiming he had been disturbed while serving.
Yet the greater problem for the top seed was Kyrgios’s clutch play in the tiebreak. The man from Canberra snuffed out Medvedev’s first set point with a big serve, staved off another by taking a backhand return impossibly early, and then dispatched the sweetest of backhand volleys on to the outermost edge of the sideline to cancel out the third.
“The first set, I guess, was the most important thing,” said Kyrgios. “I feel like if he’d got that first set, it was going to be pretty much an impossible task for me to come back and win. I just thought I played the right way.”
He has been playing the right way all summer. It may yet carry him to a first grand slam title.