Daniil Medvedev had endured nearly two hours of endless booing by the time he reached match point at midnight on Friday against Feliciano López. He had seen grown men leap from their seats and launch full-throated screams at him whenever he was near. Chants of “López! López! López!” shook the arena, not because the crowd adored Medvedev’s opponent but because they wanted to bury him. Even his missed first serves were soundtracked by whooping cheers.
As the atmosphere intensified, the Russian put his head down and did not say a word. He won and then exploded: “I want all of you to know, when you go to sleep at night, I won because of you,” he said gleefully, drunk on the boos. He stretched out his long, thin arms and closed his eyes. “The energy you’re giving me right now, guys, I think it will be enough for my five next matches. The more you do this, the more I will win, for you guys.”
Medvedev arrived at the US Open as the men’s player of the summer. He reached finals in Washington and Montreal, then torpedoed Novak Djokovic en route to his first Masters 1000 title in Cincinnati. He is a lanky 6ft 6in, a profile that lends itself to booming aggression, but this year he has established himself as the grinder to end all grinders.
Last August the 23-year-old was ranked 68th and known primarily for his rancid antics. In 2016 he was ejected from an ATP challenger match for racist comments. At Wimbledon in 2017 he threw coins towards an umpire after his defeat. This summer, he recognised his newfound calm with a warning: “[Being calm] feels much nicer, but it doesn’t mean that one day, maybe tomorrow, I’m not gonna smash three racquets.”
The crowd’s rage stemmed from Medvedev finally exploding. In the second set he dramatically snatched a towel out of a ball person’s hands. When the umpire, Damien Dumusois, handed the Russian a warning, he tossed his racket forward and marched towards him. The video replay caught him thrusting a middle finger at his detractors and the stadium erupted. It was another in a string of bad-tempered incidents from younger players. The dramatics of Nick Kyrgios are now a daily fixture of tennis. On Tuesday Stefanos Tsitsipas turned on Dumusois with a bizarre xenophobic rant: “For some reason you have something against me,” he said. “Because you’re French probably. And you’re all weirdos!”
Entitlement links the different incidents and their behaviour could partly be a consequence of the hype the ATP pours on them going straight to their heads. But it is a sad state of affairs when their insolence gains more publicity than their success. Medvedev won the Cincinnati title and reached the top five in a half-empty stadium; the other half had left after the women’s final. Only now do they all know his name.
