Daniil passes in two hours and 40 despite breathing problems. A closed crazy game 6-4 6-3 6-4 in which the rival cancels 4 match points
For the ninth time in his career out of nine attempts, Andrey Rublev’s road ends in a Grand Slam quarterfinal. The Russian loses the derby against Daniil Medvedev, who will play his fourth semifinal in the last 5 years at the US Open. The number 3 in the world above all mentally wins the challenge between two of the craziest players on the entire circuit and takes up 6-2 in the challenges against his friend Andrey. The winner of Flushing 2021 played a great tournament and is deservedly in the top 4. He finishes 6-4 6-3 6-4 for Medvedev, who takes just over 2 hours and 40 minutes to win the game in which he had big breathing problems: “I really don’t know how I won this match. In the third set I couldn’t breathe and hardly even move.”
THE RACE
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Rublev opens the game with a sensational run of 12 points to 1, overwhelming Daniil. But sensationally the set begins to reopen and then turns over. Medvedev scores 6 out of 7 games and completely overturns the partial, breaking Andrey’s serve several times and driving him totally crazy. Rublev loses his head when Medvedev throws at him and makes him miss, losing (at serve) also the first game of the second set. Daniil literally cooks his rival, prolonging the exchanges and mocking him with his brilliant intuitions. But Rublev doesn’t give up, takes advantage of two double faults in a single game by Daniil and recovers the break from disadvantage. Andrey goes wild and puts in two more games, but the advantage is squandered with a straight into the corridor that brings Medvedev back to 2-3. Rublev gets scared and the Flushing 2021 champion is crazy, extending the exchanges again and overturning up to 4-3, before a medical time-out for Medvedev himself, who accuses respiratory problems for which he takes a drug and says: “First or then someone will die here”, complaining about the extreme conditions of the climate. Daniil gets back up and holds serve (which is newsworthy in this match), before breaking the serve again with a monstrous backhand. Rublev finds himself 2-0 down and leaves the field lowering his head after kicking the ball, aware that he had first recovered from 3-0 and then from 3-1 in two different sets.
THE END
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The third set has the same development. Rublev even goes up to 4-2 with Daniil having problems on the first one and looking very tired. But Medvedev is fantastic, he comes back once again and at 4-4 he saves another break point, overturning the result and putting himself in a position to be one break away from victory. At 40-40 Daniil pulls off a great recovery that takes him to match point, but Rublev cancels it with an ace. On the second match point Andrey invents a super passer, on the third (procured after another amazing backhand) comes a great serve. On the fourth, another double acceleration from Rublev. But on the fifth Andrey is exhausted and throws a ball in the middle of the net.
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