Tennis Olympic champion Alexander Zverev lost a hard-fought duel with Daniil Medvedev and missed the quarterfinals at the Masters in Indian Wells. Zverev lost 7: 6 (7: 5), 6: 7 (5: 7), 5: 7 to the Russians, who have been unbeaten in 17 games since the Australian Open.
It was by far Zverev’s best performance since the serious ankle injury at the French Open last summer. He was the better player until Medvedev required treatment for a twisted ankle, but lost his line somewhat after that and failed to make it to the quarterfinals of the $10.1 million hard court tournament for the second time in his career.
“What a shame”
In the high-class first set, Zverev got the round with the fifth set ball. Medvedev was extremely annoyed afterwards, spat on the pitch and cursed the conditions on his bench. “What a shame to call a place like that hard,” he called out loudly. The courses in Indian Wells are among the slowest hard courts on the ATP tour.
At the beginning of the second round, Medvedev was 0:40 behind in his first two service games, but prevented Zverev from breaking both times and stayed in the game. In the sixth game, Medvedev twisted his ankle and had to be treated and taped for a little less than ten minutes.
After that, Zverev lost some of his aggressiveness. In the tie-break he fended off the first set ball against himself, but also had to go into the third set because of the ten break chances he had not used before. With two break points, Medvedev had one more than Hamburg and prevailed after 3:15 hours.