By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Wednesday October 9, 2024
The relationship between Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas was pretty bad from the start. Their first meeting at Miami in 2018 went viral because of the bad blood, and in the years that followed it remained pretty frosty.
But these days, thanks to some quality time spent on the same Laver Cup team, and the wisdom that comes with age, the pair are in a much better place.
Tsitsipas spoke of his feelings for the former World No.1 this week, ahead of their round of 16 encounter in Shanghai (won by Medvedev, 7-6(3), 6-3 – highlights below).
“I consider him someone that I respect on the tour, much more than I did before,” Tsitsipas said. “We’ve had some heated things on the court in the past, but I think those things have resolved themselves over time, and obviously we also had the time to speak about those things and have a common understanding of why these things happen.”
26-year-old Tsitsipas says it is better to put the bad blood in the rearview. Here’s how he explains it.
“I always want to resolve things like that, I don’t want to leave them,” he said. “It took a while, obviously, a pretty long time, but it’s good to kind of get it out of the way, and make sure our tennis brings peace instead of a war. It’s a war zone when you’re out there on the court trying to, obviously, fight your best and obviously try to get the win, but I feel like tennis should unite instead of separate.”
Tsitsipas says that he has gained a great appreciation for Medvedev’s tennis over the years, and admits that he didn’t always see the beauty of the Russian’s game.
“I think there are a lot of things that he has brought into the game that are, I would consider, quite unorthodox, because you haven’t seen a lot of players in the past, play the way that he does,” he said. “Which is, in fact, after thinking about it, in the past I might have said some mean stuff about his game, but after actually thinking about those things, I think I was completely wrong in that.
“There’s a lot of interesting things in his game that he brings that are very different from other players. I think that’s what makes him unique as a player, because you don’t see players like him very often, and it gives tennis another dimension in terms of how it can be played and how differently it can be crafted. So, this is definitely something that he has offered so far to the game, and I think a lot of generations are going to remember that.”
