Medvedev after his second-round marathon: “I went to bed at 7am”

It was a big question mark before his third-round match against Felix Auger-Aliassime. How Daniil Medvedev would recover from his marathon against Emil Ruusuvuori in the round, which ended victoriously at 3.40 am on Thursday night in Melbourne. The Russian swept away all doubts with a straight set. The world number three dispatched the Canadian in three sets (6-3, 6-4, 6-3) to join Nuno Borges in the last 16.

On X (formerly Twitter), John Isner also questioned the two players’ ability to go on from strength to strength. Above all, the former American player spoke of his incomprehension at seeing tennis at such late hours. After his victory, Medvedev didn’t go through the usual press conference. Instead, he spoke to reporters on Saturday about the night.

“One thing is to finish late. Other thing was four hours of pretty rough tennis and sprints and a lot of long points.

Then I had some blisters, so we needed to take care of it. We got to the hotel like 5:15 by the time we do the treatment and everything. By the time we did treatment, I went to bed at 7. Woke up at 12, which is a good sleep.”

Medvedev went on to recount how some players were surprised by his presence on the practice courts the following day: “Everyone was asking me, ‘What are you doing here? How are you feeling?’ I was actually like, ‘Not too bad.’ I had a 45-minute practice.”

Medvedev: I was at about 90 per cent today

Medvedev pulled off a major coup against Félix Auger-Aliassime. In addition to smothering his opponent from a tennis point of view, he achieved the essential: physical self-preservation, spending just two hours and nine minutes on court. But to hear him tell it, he was not far from peak form during the match.

“I felt like I could be better when moving to the ball. That’s normal. My body was not 100%. But I’m happy to be here in two days. I feel like now I have enough time to recover 100% and be ready for next match.”

He added: “I was not 100% today physically, but I was 90, 85, which is still good. I’m happy about it, so yeah.”

But Medvedev knows he can’t get away with a quick finish every time, as he did on Saturday against Auger-Aliassime.

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“I would love to win every match in three sets, but sometimes it doesn’t work like this. Emil, he played very, very strong level. I was off the first two sets. I was missing a lot. A lot of unforced errors. Can happen. I’m happy that I managed to win it.

“I think, of course, we probably never saw anyone win a Grand Slam seven matches in five sets. Physically it would be tough. Mentally. Probably you would lose one time.

“But if you’re down two sets to love, you have to try to win. If I can win next matches in three sets, I would be happy to do it. If I’m down two sets to love, I’m going to try to win, then we see what happens.

“For sure it’s better to not finish that late and not play four hours again, but let’s see what happens.”

And given the form of Nuno Borges, surprise third-round winner over Grigor Dimitrov, who has dropped only one set so far this tournament, Medvedev needs to be prepared for anything.

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