Daniil Medvedev after embarrassment returns to talk about Jannik Sinner

Daniil Medvedev continues his difficult relationship with Roland Garros: the Russian tennis player on Tuesday was surprisingly beaten on his debut by Australian Adam Walton, collecting his seventh elimination in the first round at the Paris Slam. The semifinal in Rome, in which he had made Jannik Sinner suffer, had deluded the Muscovite who instead confirmed his difficulties on the courts of the French Open.

“The game is different than five years ago, I struggle to find the ideal rhythm. The first round is usually the most difficult for me: once I get past that, it tends to get better,” said the Russian tennis player, who also took issue with the time of day, at a press conference. “I love sleeping late and I don’t like getting up early in the morning. You have to adapt and sometimes I’m not good at it, although I haven’t had any problems with the heat.”

Medvedev evoked Jannik Sinner to analyze his slump: “My tennis to be consistent needs the ball to travel. I don’t have the power of a player like Jannik Sinner who always hits hard in any condition. I depend on certain conditions, if the ball doesn’t go, it doesn’t go.”

Medvedev had already warned on the eve of the tournament of his own historical difficulties on Parisian clay. “I have never reached the semifinals here. I lost six times in the first round at Roland Garros,” he had told a press conference in the days before, adding lucidly that facing Sinner on this surface would be “almost impossible.”