Undefeated? What a Difference a Year Has Made for Daniil Medvedev

The 2026 tennis season is not even a month old, but already Daniil Medvedev has done a lot of work to erase that bad taste of 2025, a year that saw him drop four consecutive matches at the majors and drop to No.18 in the rankings, his lowest ranking since 2019.

Medvedev started the season by winning his 22nd title in Brisbane, and he has parlayed that momentum into a run to the round of 16 in Melbourne, after he battled back from two sets down to defeat Hungary’s Fabian Marozsan to set a heavily anticipated clash with American Learner Tien.

The win over Marozsan was exactly the type of match that the former world No.1 would have lost last year. In fact, he rallied from two sets down to force a deciding fifth set three times at the majors last year, and lost all three deciding sets.

It was one of those years, and as Medvedev’s season ended in a meltdown of epic proportions during his five-set loss to Benjamin Bonzi, some were wondering if the end was nigh for Medvedev.

He parted ways with his longtime coach Gilles Cervara, used new coach Thomas Johansson to gain valuable insight into his floundering game, and finished his season strong, snapping an 882-day title drought at Almaty.

Now undefeated on the season at 8-0, Medvedev is knocking on the door of the Top 10 (at No.11 in the live rankings) and looking more and more like the guy who won a major and played an additional five Grand Slam finals from 2019 to 2024 (including runner-up performance in Melbourne in 2021, 2022 and 2024).

On Day 8 he’ll get another chance to prove that he’s on the surge when he faces the man who played a role in his downfall last year. It was Learner Tien, the crafty southpaw from Southern California, who started Medvedev’s four-match major freefall. They met two more times later in the year, and split the two meetings.

“We’ve played three times. I mean, all of them have been wars. I think he served for the match all three times,” Tien said when asked to quantify the pair’s rivalry. “I think we both make a lot of balls. We both don’t give up too many free points. I think naturally that makes the rallies very long, games very long.”

Tien continues to prove that he’s a force to be reckoned with, but Medvedev won’t be surprised by what he faces when they meet for a spot in the quarterfinals in two days. It should be a classic battle of clever counterpunchers, with Tien looking for his first major quarterfinal, and Medvedev eager to get back to where he feels he belongs.