CHINA OPEN

September 30, 2024

Daniil Medvedev

Press Conference

D. MEDVEDEV/F. Cobolli

6-2, 6-4

THE MODERATOR: Daniil, congratulations. Back into the semifinals second straight year, saving 10 of 11 break points today. Talk about you playing well under pressure and looking ahead to playing Carlos.

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Yeah, I mean, today was not an easy match, but I'm happy that I fought till the end. Actually some good points here and there. One amazing shot, probably one of the best shots of my life I think, Love-30 in the last game. Super lucky. But yeah, you fight till the end, and sometimes you get these lucky shots.

Tomorrow, tough test against Carlos. I think for me, and I think I'm not the only one to say it, when he's in the zone, maybe he's a bit less than Jannik in the zone, but when he's in the zone, he's probably the best player in the world. Tough to play him. I feel like now he's in the zone. So it great test for me.

I'm going to see how I go out there tomorrow, what tactic, what do I believe in, and I'm going to go for it.

THE MODERATOR: Open it up to questions.

Q. Back to the incredible lob that you got in the last game. Can you tell me what was going through your mind when that point played out.

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Yeah, so basically first of all, it happened on the practice before the tournament. I played someone - not mentioning names. With these balls, it's ridiculous how tough it is to make a winner unless you have, like, a really unbelievable, powerful shot.

So he was going a lot to the net. I was lobbing sometimes. I was like, Wow, it's even impossible to make a lob winner, the ball literally stops after the bounce.

What happened in this point was he made an unbelievable lob, which at the moment he touched it, Oh, he got me.

Then straightaway I run for it because here it's so tough to make a winner. It's literally so tough. At the end I see that I can touch it, but it's almost unplayable. So I do like I kind of try to put my wrist whatever is possible to get the ball behind me. Then you pray in a way. When the ball was going, I was like, Maybe it's going in. Then it dropped on the line or close to the line.

Was unbelievable shot, unbelievable lucky. When you see the most unbelievable shots like on highlights reels, a lot of them are part of luck, part of fighting till the end, et cetera.

Was a super important moment, so I'm pretty happy about this one.

Q. We spoke to Carlos yesterday regarding Jannik Sinner's two failed doping tests. He had interesting things to say. On the one hand he said maybe it's not a great look for tennis, but he essentially felt quite sympathetic towards Jannik and kind of the focus that's on him. I'm just wondering sort of what's the view in the locker room? What's your view about it?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Actually, to be honest, I didn't discuss it much in the locker room, of course except with my Russian friends because we talk more.

I would generally think that the view, like everything in life, is some think that he should be banned, whatever, some think no, he should not be.

My view is always on these things is kind of try to distance myself where the situation is very tough for him, for sure, to deal with it. As I always said, no one wants to be in this situation because, I said it in US Open press, for me imagine tomorrow you get an email, because I think it's an email, you fail your doping test. They say for whatever reason, like cocaine or some drug you don't even know the name of.

You're like, Wow, what I do now because I have no idea how it happened that it's in my pee, blood, whatever.

So, yeah, it's a tricky situation. I want to say he does what he needs to do. WADA does probably what they need to do. Let's see how it finishes. We thought maybe it was finished, but no.

Yeah, I'm the same a little bit like Carlos. I'm sympathetic to Jannik. I don't think it has a bad, really bad look in tennis because I think, yeah, if 10 top-10 players suddenly would be on the same substance or something, it would be different. I think it's just an individual situation which we'll see how it ends.

Q. Cobolli seemed more aggressive than your past matchups. Was your game plan any different going into the match or did you change it throughout?

DANIIL MEDVEDEV: Yeah, I think the game plan was just a bit different because, as I said with Gael and Adrian, they like to use your speed. You don't really want to give them too fast balls because they going to move you around unless you're, again, the guy who is able to make a winner from one shot. That's not me. I don't want to run all over the place after I hit one good shot to them.

Against Flavio, in contrary, if you give him very easy balls, he likes to control the game, control the point. Yeah, so the goal was to try to aggress him a little bit.

Again, I felt like I played a good match. In a way, when you have 11 break points to save, that's not so good. But he played good on return games. In my opinion, I was serving not bad. So pretty happy and looking forward.