CHINA OPEN

October 3, 2023

Daniil Medvedev

Press Conference

D. MEDVEDEV/A. Zverev

6-4, 6-3

THE MODERATOR: Daniil, first time in Beijing and already in the final, especially from a draw like this. What are your feelings right now?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Really happy. Great match. Tough, tough draw. Tough opponent. Being in the final, great result.

The thing about tennis, when you're in the final or first round, you always want to win the tournament, the whole thing. So I hope I can show my best tomorrow and try to beat a tough opponent, depending who it is. They already have a crazy match, like always, so let's see who wins.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. Could I get a few more thoughts from you on whether you thought perhaps you found some consistency today that you didn't in your match against Ugo? Also, you made your thoughts known about the quality of the balls at this tournament. I'm wondering if you find it a sort of frustration that this late in the season you are playing on a surface and a tournament where these long, exhausting rallies are taking place with some frequency?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Yeah, I'll start with the second one.

I don't really think it matters if it's the end of the season or not. I will actually combine the first one. The difference today, either with the roof closed or playing in the evening, for whatever reason, straight in the warm-up, hitting the balls with Sascha, I was like, Wow, that's really faster than yesterday and the days before. The ball was sliding through the court. When the balls get older, because they get so big and hairy, we still had these long rallies...

But in general today was kind of where you could have like one, two good shots, and it could be enough to win the rally, which in my opinion should be the hard court tennis.

So, yeah, one of my friends, he's playing a challenger level, he actually said that it's a little bit amazing for him that we don't have something like where ATP evaluates how fast the court is, because I think they do it, just we don't really get this info, the players. Maybe us, the players, we could evaluate the ball.

The challenger level is the same, is 1 or 0.5 in terms of how fast it is, how it gets big, stuff like this. Maybe then combine fast courts with slow balls or slow courts with fast balls.

What kind of happen is when the roof is open, for whatever reason it's different. It's kind of slow ball with not fast hard court, with normal hard court. Then, as we say, like with Ugo or Alex, you feel like you play against a wall. I don't imagine what it feels like playing against me. I don't think it's really good because problems with shoulder, elbow, wrist.

Yeah, so today was different. Was great. Yeah, hopefully we can find a solution for the balls and the courts.

Q. You had a chat after the match at the net. Can you share more what did you say? What's the key for you to turn it around from your loss in Cincinnati?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Yeah, I think talking about the loss in Cincinnati, every time we play with Sascha, it's pretty even. It's a tough match. Even today finally it's very, very rare that I can beat Sascha with such a score.

He had break points in both sets. He was the first one to have these break points. The match could be the other way around. Yeah, when we play, it's always pretty close.

The match in Cincinnati, I had the break point at 4-3 in the third set for me. I take it, I probably win the match. I had even two. So there was nothing to change after Cincinnati, just playing better and trying to do these break points.

After the match, that's what I told him. Yeah, I got a little bit luckier because, again, the match was close. I said, Whoever gets the first break point in our match usually loses. That was funny (smiling).

Q. Obviously Carlos and Jannik are playing right now. Can you give us a few words on each as your potential opponent.

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Yeah, with Carlos, we played, what, three times this year. Last one was last tournament. I managed to play amazing.

He's proved himself to be the No. 1 or No. 2 player in the world this year. If you want to beat him, you need to play at your absolute best. That's what I managed to do in US Open.

It's always a great challenge. He's kind of player where you have players, and I can be this way sometimes, you are thinking, Okay, maybe he's going to have a bad day and play a little bit worse, and I could not play my best and still win.

Against Carlos, you have to play your best. He has this quality of shot and shot-making that you just need to play your best.

Against Jannik so far, I'm going quite good in head-to-head. But we had different matches. He's still so young. Every match he learns. Every tournament he learns. Since last time we played, he managed to get his first 1000 Masters title. It's a big boost of confidence. Every time we play, he's going to want to beat me more and more.

Let's see. Yeah, let's see who wins. They usually play good. Probably when I'm back, it's still first set or just finished first set. Looking forward to the opponent, yeah.

Q. I want to talk more about the big serve you have tonight. During the game you are faced with break points in your own serve game. You can always solve these problems with your big serve. Tell me more about it, how you do the mental change to make yourself calm and relaxed.

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Yeah, serve was always my big weapon since the start of my career actually. Even in juniors. Probably especially this year, I don't remember last year, but especially this year it's been sometimes a little bit too up and down. You always want to have it up. Today was a perfect service match. I don't think there was one bad thing I can say about my serve.

I think the fact that the play was faster... The faster the court is, the easier you can hit aces through the court, the easier you feel when stepping into the serve. All the matches before, some double-faults. Maybe the percentage of the serve was not amazing. You are like, If I don't put this ball on the line, I don't win the point, he's going to return it in.

You try to go for a little more, overplay it. Usually you shouldn't do it. I try to say don't do it, but then the reality is that it's very tough to focus on this.

So today I was going faster and I was really not thinking much about anything, just serving. That's the tricky part about serve. Sometimes you want to not think about anything and just go for it, and sometimes it doesn't go in so you have to start thinking, but not overthinking. Sometimes we overthink.

Yeah, that's the beauty and the tough part of tennis.