US OPEN

August 25, 2023

Daniil Medvedev

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Welcome. If you could just your thoughts as you prepare for this Open.

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: I love US Open. I feel excited to play. I feel excited to play. I feel excited for next week. I feel excited to come out on court and see how the crowd is going to be this year.

Not much more to add. Feeling pretty well physically, mentally. Want to try to play better than I did last couple of weeks and let's see how it's going to go.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. What has been the most enjoyable thing you've done outside of tennis? Your thoughts on Harry Kane coming to Bayern, your favorite team, your hopes and thoughts about Thunder season.

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Let's start with Bayern first. Harry Kane is a big player. It's like the thing with tennis, same with football. The only thing I can know about football is what I read in the media. In the media it seems like he's a great leader, great guy. He's already completely in the team. Let's see how it goes on the pitch. Hopefully he can score many goals.

Talking about my time in New York, I always enjoy New York. I feel like it's a great city, electric city. I don't know how it is to live here because I feel like this city can take your energy if you stay here for too long. To be here three weeks, one month, is super fun.

What would be the most enjoyable thing? Yeah, I love there is a restaurant -- free advertising -- called Mari Vanna. It's pretty amazing. That's where I celebrated my win two years ago. It's always great to come back there.

Q. What was it like defending your championship here?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: I don't remember how it was one year ago. I will generally say I don't think I really felt much pressure. I just wanted to do well.

Tough match against Nick. Generally last year, if I take it as a whole, I was not playing too bad. I was in Turin. Final of Australian Open, even if it's in the beginning of the year, it's still last year. In general, the year was maybe my worst year in four, five years.

So I don't think it was something to do with defending the US Open title itself. But, yeah, I hope I can defend one of the titles. I never had two for the moment. That's my chance here.

I'm sure Carlos is such a strong player that I'm sure it's not going to bother him too much about thinking to defend his title.

Q. What opportunity have you had this summer to watch Alcaraz against Djokovic and what are your thoughts about their rivalry at the moment?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Well, I usually say I don't watch matches when I lose a tournament. So during Wimbledon, I didn't watch it, but I follow the live score. It's easy on the phone, you put in LiveScore. At one moment I saw they had a 30-minute game. I was like, Okay, I'm going to watch it. I turned it on. It was amazing to watch.

Sometimes you have some things to do, so I was not glued to my TV, but I watched most of the final. It was amazing to watch because Novak was kind of down in the beginning of the fourth set. I was surprised he managed to win it with the way the match was going. Then at the same time I was surprised how Carlos managed to turn it back.

That's why at the moment they are No. 1 and 2 in the world. You cannot argue with that because they are able yet, even when they play against each other, to turn this match around so many times.

Same about Cincinnati. I mean, I was still there, so I watched not only their match, but their match, I watched it. Amazing level. It was not easy to play in Cincinnati. The balls are tough to control. They don't care about this. They still play their best. All this championship points saved, we go to the tiebreak. Was amazing to see.

Great rivalry so far. But yeah, now every tournament, a goal for everyone is to try to stop them from playing each other.

Q. Novak talked about his match in the final against you two years ago. What do you take from that final for this year? What thoughts do you have about him being back?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Him being back is great. I always said I want him to play every tournament, especially even if at the moment he seems super young, there's going to be one moment, we don't know when, 45 years old, 40 years old, he's going to stop. I think that's the reality (smiling). I don't think he's going to go more than 45 years old or something.

So before he stops, it's great to see him play in every tournament. Out of let's say out of the big three, I played Roger, I was not the same as I am right now, my game matches Novak's the best. He's still probably the greatest of all time. It's great that I can give him hard time.

Same, two years ago I managed to play definitely one of, if not the best, match of my life. I want to try to do it again. He's other part of the draw, so let's see.

Q. Novak and Carlos are occupying a lot of the attention. You're getting asked about them. Everyone is. People are already thinking about them meeting in the final. How does that feel for someone like you, who has won this title, is a contender for the title? Is it irritating? Motivating?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: No, I think honestly it's great. I think it's great for tennis that we have these two guys playing against each other right now.

As I say, it's a great story, but then the tournament starts and hopefully we can -- when I say 'we', me personally or someone else -- we're going to try to beat them and stop them from playing each other.

But again, doesn't irritate me at all because I always said that sometimes we have this overrated, underrated, right, usually in social media. You go on Instagram and everyone after every match is like, He's overrated, He's underrated. That's their favorite thing to say.

In my opinion, tennis is one of sports where you almost can say this. Football, it's 11 against 11. Even if the team wins, you can always say something about the players. Tennis is one against one. We have rankings, 52 weeks, unless someone was injured, that's the ranking you have, done. Now they're 1, 2 by the margin. I think they are maybe a thousand, 500 points ahead of me. I'm No. 3 by the margin. There's no one behind me, at least that close, if I remember it right.

I think that's normal we talk about them. I do think we still talk about me. I'm not feeling too bad, but I'm going to try. The goal is, after this US Open, that we talk about me, so I'm going to try to do it.

Q. Does the role of disruptor, the party-pooper, does that suit you?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: I don't know, because consciously I don't think about it. I just try to win. That's the most important. But unconsciously, I feel like many times I was playing good in this role. Hopefully it can help me this week, these two weeks.

Q. You said you're hoping to play better here than you have been doing in the last couple of weeks. Could you reflect on maybe some of the parts of your game you thought weren't quite right. Was one of them the serve? Seemed like you were struggling a little bit.

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Definitely the serve, trying to work on it right now. Serve is a tough shot because it's such fine margins sometimes. It's kind of probably the most important shot in tennis because in general serve can save you many times. You can play not best match, but serve can save you. You go to the tiebreak, then you start playing better. Happened to me many times.

Everyone went through this stage and sometimes it's in one week and sometimes it's in one month where you serve just a little bit worse.

In general, I know I can serve very well. Usually US Open for whatever reason I was serving kind of even better than I usually do. Hopefully this can help me.

If not, in general the two matches I lost were not bad matches. Yeah, that's the thing about tennis. Sometimes if you don't play a very good match, you could lose. Against Sascha, I felt like I played, let's call it, almost a good match. Against de Minaur, I played in general good, but there were some moments where my game was dropping too much.

All of this is experience. I want to try to find confidence here and get it going and play better and better here in the tournament.

Q. Sometimes there can be issues with fatigue at this point in the season. Where do you rate your energy, what you may do to conserve energy now?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: I feel great. Then we come again to this unconscious part. Do I feel tired? I don't think so. I feel great. Also Toronto and Cincinnati I had a lot of time to continue practicing, preparing, just because I had this off time when you lose.

It all comes down to how do you feel during the tournament. It can be different. You can come to the tournament, you feel awful, then during the tournament you feel better and better. Or the other way around.

I'm feeling good right now. Hopefully I can feel like this during the tournament also. How do you cope with this? You try with your team to do the best schedule possible in terms of days off, practices, what you do in your off time. I feel like I'm pretty experienced in this so hopefully I can be 100% starting from the first match.

Q. Your go-to order at Mari Vanna?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Syrniki is very good. I do not know if I say it right in English. Yeah, I would say Syrniki is very good.

Q. With regard to Carlos and your matchups with him in the past, is it something that you think about as you go through a season and do you keep studying him, what might work in the future, or do you chalk it up to surfaces, bad days?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: I usually try not to overthink because then you come to the point where probably there would be some guys - we're all different tennis players - so some guys overthink. I'm sure some of them would look Novak under the microscope, his matches and stuff like this, try to see this and that. Then you play him, it's not that easy.

Same with Carlos. I could watch all his matches and try to see what should I do. But, no, sometimes when I see him on TV, I could see maybe Novak or Jannik or Tommy Paul usually gives him hard time. See one thing and think, Maybe he's a little bit in trouble on this or that.

But then during the match, it's a complete different story. We played two times this year. It didn't go at all well for me. I would call it two easy matches in a way. But for me it's only motivation. Next time I play him I will try to do better because I don't want to be beaten easy. That's not why I play tennis. That's not who I am.

Every time I can meet him, it means semis minimum, here also. So it could be already great. I'm going to try my best to do better.

Q. Do you feel like you learned from those two matches?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: I hope so. I hope I always learn because you can never know. For sure, tactically you learn something. But he's a very strong player, especially for his age. As Novak also says. He will try even during the match, he will see it very fast that maybe you're doing something to disrupt his game, and he's going to try to change things up. It's going to be during the match.

It's mostly that I hope when I lose that I learn, otherwise it's even tougher to lose because I lost for nothing. I hope I learn from this. Every time I go to the tournament, to the next one, I hope I can do better.