After two late games at Flushing Meadows, third seed Daniil Medvedev finally ended his task “early” on Monday by beating Australia’s Alex de Minaur 2-6, 6-4, 6-1. With 6:2, he reached the quarterfinals of the US Open for the fourth time in five years.
Medvedev has been playing the night shift at the US Open, with his last two games starting one day and ending early the next, but after a shaky start, he came through and managed to overtake the 13th-seeded De Minaur series.
“Today, in the first set, it seemed like he couldn’t miss anything,” said Medvedev. “I failed too badly.”
“I had the feeling that he was playing at the highest level.”
“I was like, wow, it’s destroying me, hence the score.”
“Shooting the game like this is always a great feeling. It gives you a lot of confidence for the next games.”
Medvedev, the 2021 champions, led 4-2, but the Australian had won the last two meetings, including a consecutive quarter-final win at the Canadian Masters warm-up tournament.
De Minaur appeared poised to claim his third straight win after winning the first set in the Louis Armstrong before Medvedev found his comfort zone.
The Russian eventually began to dictate the game, breaking out to win the second set and increasing the pressure in the third set to take the lead before calmly securing a comfortable win.
Now he meets his compatriot Andrei Rublev, the godfather of Medvedev’s daughter, in the quarterfinals.
“I think we are very close. We have a great relationship,” said Medvedev. “Having a friend like that is great, but on track, we both want to win.”
“In two days, we won’t be friends anymore.”
