Daniil Medvedev believes a ‘third man’ will challenge Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz in the future.
Medvedev is speaking from experience as he was the one preventing Novak Djokovic from winning the Grand Slam and has often disrupted the status quo in tennis.
At the moment nobody is able to break the dominance that is led by Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz with the duo claiming all the big titles.
However, Medvedev believes a third guy could challenge the duo in the future, “Jannik and Carlos are playing amazing, they are the top two at the moment and they are playing better than everyone else, but never underestimate a third guy who is going to come and challenge them,” Medvedev told the ATP website.
“There is a lot of talk about this: ‘How is it possible that no one is close to them?’ Carlos, when he was 17, came on Tour and everyone was like ‘How can he hit so strong? I can practise 10 hours a day and not hit that strong.’ So, when he has the days that he can’t miss — and he has them a lot — there is not any chance for us. It’s the same for Jannik, he’s a really strong player.”
It’s been a dominant last couple of years for Sinner and Alcaraz who have cleaned up most of the Grand Slams.
Although Medvedev hasn’t lived up to his own expectations this year, the former US Open champions believe that stylistically there are players that can beat them on their day, “They are strong players, but at the same time, they both can lose sometimes,” Medvedev explained.
“For example, Jannik lost against Sascha [Bublik] in Halle and Sascha won the tournament. Carlos lost against Botic [Van de Zandschulp] just less than a year ago… Every time when you are on the court with them, you need to try to win.
“It’s funny because many people ask me about Jannik and Carlos, but at the moment this year, I haven’t played them in the Slams, I’ve played much worse. That’s a bit of a ‘good’ problem for me, because I want to be there where they are, in the fourth round or quarters. I actually don’t think it will be tough for me, because it was already tough. I managed to do it once against Novak.”
Speaking of Medvedev, the 29 year-old is currently 11th in the race for Turin and has a 26-16 win-loss record which by his standards isn’t good enough.
Speaking about his form Medvedev knows he has to improve but believes he can still qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals, “It’s very tough in tennis, because I could find 10 reasons and I would not know which one is the main reason,” Medvedev said.
“Whatever we do, we just try to improve. So we sat down with the team: Where can we do things better? What can we change? We discussed some things and I’m going to try and implement it. This is the most exciting part of the season, there is hard courts until Miami next year. So I will try to give my best and enjoy it. It’s an opportunity, I want to take it as a challenge of trying to raise my level in the big occasions, trying to go step by step.
“At this part of the season, Turin is a long way to go for everyone except for Carlos and Jannik, who are sure to be there, and maybe Sascha [Zverev] who will have a lot of points to be close to being a little bit calm. For all the other guys, some tournaments you play good and the other guy plays good, it’s game on or game over.
“I usually was in a better position at this time of the year, but I’m very close… You just need to make a quarter-final of a Masters 1000 and you are almost there already, so I just need to play well.”
Medvedev will begin his Cincinnati campaign against Adam Walton on Sunday.
