And so the season ends just as it began, with Andrey Rublev and Daniil Medvedev propelling Russia to triumph. It has been 15 years since the country last won the Davis Cup, but in truth a third title looked like Russia’s to lose from the moment they scored a convincing victory over Italy in the final of February’s ATP Cup. So it proved, Rublev and Medvedev once again combining to clinch a convincing 2-0 victory over Croatia that completed a clean sweep of the team events for Russia, whose women won the Billie Jean King Cup last month in Prague.
Medvedev, the reigning US Open champion, will inevitably dominate the headlines after clinching the tie with a 7-6 (9-7), 6-2 win over Marin Cilic to ensure a perfect record of five straight-sets wins from five matches at the Madrid finals. “It was the best two weeks of my career,” he said afterwards – quite a statement after a year that has brought a first grand slam title and a rise to a career-high ranking of No 2 in the world.
Yet the real key to Russia’s victory was Rublev’s 6-4, 7-6 (7-5) win over Borna Gojo. With Mate Pavic and Nikola Mektic, the world’s best doubles pair, waiting in the wings to pounce should the tie go down to the third rubber, any slip-up against the 276th-ranked Gojo would probably have been fatal to Russia’s ambitions.
Like Medvedev, Rublev has had a year to remember, reaching his first Masters series finals in Monte Carlo and Cincinnati, winning the Olympic mixed doubles title alongside Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, and climbing to fifth in the world. Yet his late-season form has been largely indifferent, and after struggling in the group stage, where he lost to the Spanish veteran Feliciano López and required three sets to get past Ecuador’s Roberto Quiroz and Elias Ymer of Sweden – respectively ranked 291 and 171 – there was a hint of vulnerability about Rublev going into the final.
It will hardly have done much for his peace of mind that Gojo has spent the past 10 days making a mockery of the form book, but here Rublev was focused and ruthless. Against an opponent who had won each of his previous three matches, all against men ranked more than 200 places above him, the Muscovite produced a near-flawless performance on serve, winning a remarkable 92% of the points behind his second delivery to ensure that Gojo never held a break point. A break in the seventh game was enough to decide the opener, and although he failed to convert any of the other seven break points he held in the contest, Rublev cut an increasingly animated figure as he charged for the finish line.
“It was a really tough match,” said Rublev. “It’s true that I had a lot of pressure today, because for the spectators it looked like I should win, the way the ranking is. But he was playing really great during all the event. He beat really great players. Today he was playing also really great.
“But I was lucky enough to win the match. In the second set I was showing emotions a bit, because I felt I was really close to winning the match. Somehow, he was always serving really well and really hard, [so] that I could not do anything. But in the end, I won the match and this is the most important thing. In general, for Daniil and for me, it was most important to try to win the singles, because the doubles was really, really tough for us. So we were trying our best to give everything in both singles matches.”
Cilic, who missed a break point for a 5-3 lead in the opener, felt Medvedev’s serving was the decisive factor in his defeat, but spoke with pride of Croatia’s appearance in a third Davis Cup final since 2016.
“I think today he was serving just a little bit better overall in the whole match. I had the first set, 4-3 break point, second serve, missed the return on the let. It was very close even there to get the break. Tiebreak very close again.
“You could see that he was serving amazing. That’s the rock of his game. When he’s serving great, he’s going to play good. He has more chances to attack, more chances on the return. I was expecting this.
“[But] three finals in five years, it’s just incredible for our small team.”