By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Wednesday April 12, 2023
What do Oil and water, Thanksgiving dinner and politics and Daniil Medvedev and red clay have in common? You guessed it, they don’t – or shouldn’t – mix, but in Medvedev’s clay, the red clay is looking okay after one match in 2023.
Medvedev took out Lorenzo Sonego 6-3, 6-2 on Wednesday to set a round of 16 clash with Alexander Zverev.
After the victory the always honest Medvedev, now a winner of his last 26 matches on tour, said that confidence can carry over, but it doesn’t change the cold, hard truth: he doesn’t enjoy playing on clay.
“Every time I come on clay just before the first hit, I'm like trying to put it in my head that [I need to] try to take pleasure playing on clay. Try to enjoy it. Try to get used to it. Try to play better. And after 10 minutes I’m like ‘Wow, that's really not my thing.’”
Hilarious? Yes. Confidence-inspiring? Not exactly.
If Medvedev can’t enjoy playing on the clay, it’s hard to imagine him having a breakout spring on the surface. Then again, the Russian was a walking contradiction at Indian Wells, where he heaped criticism on the slow-playing hard courts in play at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden and still managed a career-best performance by reaching the final.
The self-declared “toxic relationship” with that surface didn’t hurt his performance, so maybe it can be the same on the red clay in Monte-Carlo and beyond?
A big maybe.
Medvedev is 19-23 on clay lifetime and hasn’t really figured out a way to play the kind of tennis that allows him to thrive. Even after today’s win over Sonego it sounded like the surface is already getting to him.
“I always struggle on clay,” he said, adding: “Every match is a struggle.
One man’s confidence is another man’s struggle. In this case, Medvedev is both men.
“There's no rhythm on Play. Every bounce is a bad bounce. And even when it's a good bounce, you are expecting a bounce so you cannot get into a rhythm,” he said.
But a few moments later he reminded us all of why Medvedev’s clay problems may not be as bad as he leads us to believe.
“It's completely different on clay, but confidence is confidence. It's about winning matches because it's always two players that play and one is going to win,” he said. “ I hope to bring this confidence even further.”