Medvedev: I Wasn’t That Aggressive Against Alcaraz

Carlos Alcaraz, after his 6-3, 7-6(3) loss to Daniil Medvedev on Satudurday, said he’d never seen the Russian play so aggressive.

“I think that surprised me a little bit,” he told reporters. “I knew at the beginning that he was going to play aggressive, but the way he did it surprised me a lot, because he didn’t miss any or he didn’t miss as much as I expected. He was playing aggressive, and he didn’t even miss. So it was tricky.”

Medvedev says he didn’t have a plan to red-line his game. He says he was just playing with confidence and trying to take it to his opponent.

“It always has to be a balance, because I did try a bit in my career at one point to be, let’s call it overaggressive, and it was not good,” Medvedev said. “It was spending too much energy, it was not my style of playing, and I was getting crazy, breaking racquets, et cetera. I’m not talking about last year. It’s not exactly the case last year what I was trying to do, but in general.

“Right now, I’m in confidence and when I’m in confidence, I always said I feel like I’m an aggressive player.”

So who do we believe, or are both versions true? Medvedev has always been tough to pin down. He’s unorthodox, he’s deceptive, and he can go on the attack, but today his aggressive stood out to his opponent.

The Russian says the plan was to play at the edge of his game, but not to cross the line.

“Today there was no plan to be, like, too aggressive,” he said. “Because that can cost you against Carlos, who is great on defense, so you can start making too many errors. The plan was just to play the way I did with the whole previous matches, hit the ball great, put him in pressure, serve great, and it worked out well.”

Indeed it did. Medvedev notched his third win over Alcaraz, and his eighth career win over a reigning World No.1. Like Sinner, he can complete the set of six Masters 1000 hard court titles with a win on Sunday.