Madrid (Spain) – One of the most consistent players on the current circuit, Russian Daniil Medvedev proves this fame with numbers. This Tuesday, by beating Kazakh Alexander Bublik in straight sets, with partials of 7/6 (7-3) and 6/4, he guaranteed himself in the quarterfinals in Madrid and completed the quarterfinals in all current Masters 1000 .
Medvedev, who made his first quarterfinals appearance at this level in 2019 in Monte Carlo, recovered from a break in the opening set against Bublik before securing a 2-0 victory in 1h44. After expanding his “parish” against the Kazakh, with six victories in six games, the Russian will now face the Spaniard Rafael Nadal or the Czech Jiri Lehecka, seeded 30th.
For the 20th time in the quarterfinals of a Masters 1000, the third in 2024, the number 4 in the world knows that it will not be an easy game. “I watched Nadal’s third set yesterday, who didn’t look very tired, but Pedro (Cachin) was. It will be interesting to see how it goes today. I trained with Jiri here before the tournament started and he was playing great tennis”, analyzed the Russian in the on-court interview.
The Russian became the tenth active player to reach the quarterfinals in every Masters 1000, joining a select list that includes the Spaniard Rafael Nadal, the Serbian Novak Djokovic, the British Andy Murray, the Frenchman Gael Monfils, the Croatian Marin Cilic, Austrian Dominic Thiem, Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, German Alexander Zverev and Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov.
Two very different sets
In the first set of the match against Bublik, the fourth, fifth and sixth games were the busiest, with chances of breakout for both sides. Medvedev missed the chance to be the first to break, ended up suffering a break afterwards, but returned the deficit soon after. The decision ended up going to a tiebreaker, in which the Russian opened 6-0 and closed the fourth set-point.
Taking advantage of the momentum of victory in the initial part, the third seed started with everything in the second, recorded two consecutive breaks and won the first four games. Bublik showed some reaction when returning one of the breaks when his rival served to close at 5/2, but he couldn’t go beyond that and two games later he saw Medvedev convert the first match-point he had.
Although both are good servers, they did not have such an outstanding performance, Bublik only won 56% of the points, had 2 aces and 4 double faults, while Medvedev had 65% success, scored no aces and committed 2 double faults. The Kazakh even won the battle of winners (33 to 17), but made up for it with double faults (27 to 10).
