By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Wednesday October 9, 2024
The connection between Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas was fairly dangerous from the beginning. Their first assembly at Miami in 2018 went viral due to the dangerous blood, and within the years that adopted it remained fairly frosty.
However nowadays, due to some high quality time spent on the identical Laver Cup group, and the knowledge that comes with age, the pair are in a significantly better place.
Tsitsipas spoke of his emotions for the previous World No.1 this week, forward of their spherical of 16 encounter in Shanghai (received by Medvedev, 7-6(3), 6-3 – highlights beneath).
“I think about him somebody that I respect on the tour, far more than I did earlier than,” Tsitsipas mentioned. “We have had some heated issues on the court docket prior to now, however I believe these issues have resolved themselves over time, and clearly we additionally had the time to discuss these issues and have a standard understanding of why these items occur.”
26-year-old Tsitsipas says it’s higher to place the dangerous blood within the rearview. Right here’s how he explains it.
“I all the time wish to resolve issues like that, I do not wish to go away them,” he mentioned. “It took some time, clearly, a reasonably very long time, but it surely’s good to sort of get it out of the best way, and ensure our tennis brings peace as a substitute of a warfare. It is a warfare zone if you’re on the market on the court docket attempting to, clearly, battle your finest and clearly attempt to get the win, however I really feel like tennis ought to unite as a substitute of separate.”
Tsitsipas says that he has gained an excellent appreciation for Medvedev’s tennis through the years, and admits that he didn’t all the time see the great thing about the Russian’s sport.
“I believe there are quite a lot of issues that he has introduced into the sport which might be, I might think about, fairly unorthodox, as a result of you have not seen quite a lot of gamers prior to now, play the best way that he does,” he mentioned. “Which is, the truth is, after occupied with it, prior to now I may need mentioned some imply stuff about his sport, however after truly occupied with these issues, I believe I used to be utterly unsuitable in that.
“There’s quite a lot of fascinating issues in his sport that he brings which might be very completely different from different gamers. I believe that is what makes him distinctive as a participant, since you do not see gamers like him fairly often, and it offers tennis one other dimension when it comes to how it may be performed and the way in a different way it may be crafted. So, that is undoubtedly one thing that he has provided to this point to the sport, and I believe quite a lot of generations are going to keep in mind that.”
