Third-seeded Daniil Medvedev navigated an up-and-down quarterfinal match at the Australian Open to emerge with a 7-6 (4), 2-6, 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 victory over ninth-seeded Hubert Hurkacz on Wednesday in Melbourne.
Medvedev’s winning drop shot on match point sealed the victory in 3 hours, 59 minutes.
“I am so destroyed right now,” Medvedev said in a postmatch interview on court. “Honestly, not that I ran out of gas, but I was feeling very (tired) physically at the end of the second set. So I was, ‘All right. I need to try to stay tough.’ (I went up a) break in the fourth, but he played good. …
“Fourth set, I had no more concentration. I just had to try my best to do whatever I can, and let’s see. If I lose, I lose and I go home. That’s OK. I’m happy that … I managed to win, and I really liked the match point.”
Next up for Medvedev is a semifinal match against either second-seeded Carlos Alcaraz of Spain or sixth-seeded Alexander Zverev of Germany.
Medvedev, 27, is one win away from matching his best results at the Australian Open, runner-up finishes in 2021 (lost to Serbia’s Novak Djokovic) and in 2022 (lost to Spain’s Rafael Nadal). His lone Grand Slam championship came at the 2021 U.S. Open, when he got past Djokovic in the final.
Medvedev saved 10 of 15 break points against Hurkacz, who saved five of the nine break points on his own serve.
It was the second time in the fortnight that Medvedev played a five-set match. In the second round, when he escaped a two-set deficit against Finland’s Emil Ruusuvuori, the match ended at 3:39 a.m. local time. On Wednesday, Medvedev survived through the daytime heat.
“With Ruusuvuori, after the second set, I’m on the court, it’s already like 2 in the morning, I don’t think I’m going to be able to catch a 6-hour flight tomorrow in the evening, so I’m going to have to tell me wife I’m going to stay one (more) day in Australia,” Medvedev said. “And I’m (still) here.”
–Field Level Media
