By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Wednesday October 9, 2024
The connection between Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas was fairly unhealthy from the beginning. Their first assembly at Miami in 2018 went viral due to the unhealthy blood, and within the years that adopted it remained fairly frosty.
However as of late, due to some high quality time spent on the identical Laver Cup crew, and the knowledge that comes with age, the pair are in a a lot better place.
Tsitsipas spoke of his emotions for the previous World No.1 this week, forward of their spherical of 16 encounter in Shanghai (received by Medvedev, 7-6(3), 6-3 – highlights beneath).
“I think about him somebody that I respect on the tour, rather more than I did earlier than,” Tsitsipas mentioned. “We have had some heated issues on the courtroom previously, however I believe these issues have resolved themselves over time, and clearly we additionally had the time to discuss these issues and have a standard understanding of why this stuff occur.”
26-year-old Tsitsipas says it’s higher to place the unhealthy blood within the rearview. Right here’s how he explains it.
“I all the time need to resolve issues like that, I do not need to depart them,” he mentioned. “It took some time, clearly, a reasonably very long time, but it surely’s good to sort of get it out of the way in which, and ensure our tennis brings peace as a substitute of a warfare. It is a warfare zone if you’re on the market on the courtroom making an attempt to, clearly, combat your finest and clearly attempt to get the win, however I really feel like tennis ought to unite as a substitute of separate.”
Tsitsipas says that he has gained an awesome appreciation for Medvedev’s tennis over time, and admits that he didn’t all the time see the fantastic thing about the Russian’s recreation.
“I believe there are lots of issues that he has introduced into the sport which might be, I might think about, fairly unorthodox, as a result of you have not seen lots of gamers previously, play the way in which that he does,” he mentioned. “Which is, the truth is, after excited about it, previously I might need mentioned some imply stuff about his recreation, however after really excited about these issues, I believe I used to be utterly fallacious in that.
“There’s lots of attention-grabbing issues in his recreation that he brings which might be very totally different from different gamers. I believe that is what makes him distinctive as a participant, since you do not see gamers like him fairly often, and it provides tennis one other dimension by way of how it may be performed and the way in a different way it may be crafted. So, that is undoubtedly one thing that he has supplied up to now to the sport, and I believe lots of generations are going to do not forget that.”
