Daniil Medvedev won five singles titles in 2023 and was close to a sixth trophy at the Beijing tournament. The opponent was well known – the Russian had already defeated Jannik Sinner six times, but the seventh meeting followed a different scenario.

Our tennis player failed two tiebreaks and lost to an Italian for the first time in his career.

Have the coughing Chinese really brought down their victorious mood?

“Happy with the performance”

The final match of the ATP-500 series tournament took place in Beijing on Wednesday. On hard court, Daniil Medvedev was going to give a fight to Jannik Sinner; the Russian’s chances of winning were highly rated – in six previous head-to-head meetings, it was he who managed to emerge victorious. Our tennis player received the second seed and on the way to the main match he confidently justified his status as a favorite. In the first round we managed to deal with American Tommy Paul, who took only three games. Australian Alex de Minaur was beaten in two sets. The quarterfinal meeting dragged on a little: Andrei Rublev’s offender, Frenchman Hugo Humbert, clung to the result, but he, too, ultimately capitulated.

To reach the final, Medvedev had to defeat Olympic champion Alexander Zverev, which the tennis player successfully completed – 6:4, 6:3. After the victory, Daniil was pleased with everything, praising the court and the presence of the roof. But most importantly, the Russian was satisfied with his game. Sinner also approached the final in a great mood – in the semifinals he managed to beat the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz in two sets.

— I will call this match the best in which I played. I took the second set with a score of 6:1, but he had a lot of chances, and I just tried not to get distracted. The first set was a rollercoaster, but I tried to keep myself in check mentally. Of course, I’m very pleased with my performance. I think the execution of the game plan was very good. Mostly I tried to stay aggressive because when he has a lot of time, he plays very well and very aggressively,” Sinner said after reaching the final.

Sinner lifted the curse

The first set turned out to be very close: 11 hits for both, 17 unforced errors for Medvedev, 14 for Sinner. The course of the game was also smooth; no one managed to get ahead. Yannick took his serve in the fight, Daniil bounced back immediately. In the next two games, the opponents also managed without breaks. Then the Russian was close to turning the tide in his favor, but missed a break point. Sinner was close to a break in the eighth game, but Daniil turned on a powerful serve at 15:40 and took the game, winning four points in a row.

The stubborn confrontation continued until the tie-break, and there, alas, our athlete failed. Having given up five plays in a row to his opponent, Medvedev tried to return to the game. He was successful with one serve, and managed to score another point due to luck – the ball touched the cable. But after a shootout on the back line, everything in this game was over – Sinner won the tiebreaker with a score of 7:2 and retained the first set.

Jannik Sinner / Photo: © REUTERS/Florence Lo

In the second game, the plot did not change fundamentally. Except that Medvedev served first and took the lead for almost the entire set. But Sinner invariably caught up with him, not allowing him to earn a single break point. Daniil acted a little worse on serve, but I can’t say that he made more mistakes than his opponent. Sinner just grabbed the chance and didn’t want to miss it. But the Russian seemed to have difficulties with his mood.

Perhaps the interference was caused by the Chinese fans, who, hiding their faces under masks, periodically coughed into their hands – the former world ranking leader even glanced disapprovingly at the stands a couple of times. But what can you do – the Italian played in the same conditions. It came down to a tiebreaker again, which ended the same way as the first. Sinner won in two games and broke the curse of personal meetings with Medvedev. It’s especially offensive for Dani and his fans that this happened in the finale.