In the morning at the Caja Magica he speaks Russian. After the success of Andrey Rublev, comes the success of Daniil Medvedev in the Masters1000 in Madrid. The number 3 in the men’s draw gets the better of Alexander Bublik in a highly anticipated match, both for the talent of the two contenders and for the two personalities who would have descended on the Spanish red. In the end, a match with many faces arrives, with a brilliant first set and a second that fuels after a start in which the Kazakh disappeared from the field, with a 7-6 6-4 in an hour and three quarters with Daniil thus reaching the place among the best eight in the only 1000 in which he missed this goal.
Yet the first three quarters of an hour of the match are really promising. Medvedev pushes the backhand diagonal and Bublik tries to come out with talent. The Russian is the first to get a break point, finding the opposition of his opponent, and then lives a disastrous fifth game, offering three chances to the Kazakh. The second is the right one, but the world number 4 starts pushing again and manages to get the challenge back on its feet. We travel until the tiebreak, when Bublik starts to make mistakes on the backhand diagonal; Medvedev flies 6-0, loses two minibreaks and even gets a point on his opponent’s classic serve from underneath, but the fourth chance is enough to close the set.
And the Kazakh mentally exits the match for a good quarter of an hour, showing all the reasons why it is not a top 10 in the world. He is stubborn with the short ball and Medvedev is a hawk, breaks and smashes the racket. Medvedev doesn’t shine either, giving away a break point with a truly unfortunate forehand error, but Bublik doesn’t take advantage of it and actually collapses 4-0, even risking his coat when he finds himself down 0-30 in the fifth game. At least from there the Kazakh goes back to playing tennis a bit, avoiding the bagel and slowly getting the match back on its feet, with Medvedev struggling to get back on track. The game changes again at 0-15 in the tenth game, with a mistake by the Kazakh who restores confidence in the number 3 seed who finishes without hesitation.
In the end the most consistent tennis player won, it is no coincidence that in six matches Bublik won only one set. Note the enormous margin of unforced errors, 8 for Medvedev and 37 for his opponent, which thus negatively balances the fact of having achieved double the winners, 32 to 16.
