Daniil Medvedev, like any other professional athlete, loves winning, but he usually doesn’t celebrate his wins too ostentatiously. That changed at the 2025 Indian Wells Open.
Medvedev is known for many things on the tennis courts. He’s known as a former US Open champion, former ATP World No. 1 player, and also someone who has a very unusual style.
The Russian isn’t the most eye-pleasing tennis player, with many fans making fun of his technique, but at the end of the day, he reached the World No. 1 spot, so as they say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Another unusual thing about Medvedev is how he celebrates his wins. While many tennis players often heavily celebrate their wins, that’s not the case for the 29-year-old player. Over the years, he came up with many interesting celebrations, such as when he danced after winning or pretended like his win wasn’t anything special, shrugging his shoulders.
Most famously, Medvedev fell on the court doing the “dead fish” celebration from the popular game FIFA after winning the 2021 US Open.
Now, he celebrated uncharacteristically again. Medvedev needs a big result, and he got closer to one at the 2025 Indian Wells Open after beating Arthur Fils 6-4, 2-6, 7-6(7).
After beating the Frenchman, the ATP World No. 6 started, quite literally, jumping for joy. That’s something that fans haven’t seen from him before, and he explained his unusual celebration after the match.
“Yeah, I didn’t see it yet, but yeah, I mean, first of all, I lost three very tight matches this year, two of which I was really close to winning, [Learner] Tien and [Tallon] Griekspoor. The more you lose matches like this, the more you lose confidence in these tight moments.”
“I remember one time 2018, I was actually surprised, I didn’t follow the statistic, but I had like 20 tie-breaks won in a row, something like this. This is a matter of confidence. Sometimes you are; sometimes you are not. If I would have lost this one, I would have felt bad.”
Medvedev also explained that he celebrated so heavily because he thought his opponent would win that point, so winning it actually surprised him.
“And also, I was actually if I would make a winner on match point, I would probably be less excited because I was surprised; I thought the point was over, and we go again, and he missed it. It happens. I was surprised, and that got my adrenaline too much. I couldn’t control it (smiling).”
The Russian will hope to have another reason to celebrate after his semi-final match at the first ATP Masters 1000 tournament of the season. He will take on Holger Rune.
