Daniil Medvedev addressed doubters who said his career was “finished” after getting his first win of the week at the ATP Finals.
The Russian had a self-confessed “tantrum” in his opening round-robin match against Taylor Fritz, receiving a point penalty and threatening to retire. But he turned things around to beat Alex de Minaur on Tuesday.
Afterwards, Medvedev celebrated by sticking his fingers in his ears and writing an unusual message on the camera lens.
Medvedev earned his first tour win in more than a month as he downed De Minaur 6-2 6-4 during the group stage of the season-ending championships.
He celebrated in true Medvedev style with a cryptic gesture, blocking out the sound of the crowd. For good measure, he wrote “block the noise” on the camera.
The former ATP Finals champion later explained why he wanted to shut out the spectators, claiming they could go to extremes whether he was winning or losing.
“Yeah I think a lot of football players do it sometimes,” he said of the statement he wrote on the lens. “Not sure, maybe Memphis Depay was the first one to do it.
“If I understand it right it’s kind of more about social media and stuff. For sure, after my performance against Taylor and some of my comments, I tried to use it less but sometimes I don’t.
“I went into this match blocking the noise even from myself, no tantrums and stuff, just block the noise and really didn’t care what was happening on the court, I just tried to play and it was a good feeling. Usually I celebrate when I win the tournaments but today I didn’t care.”
Asked whether that noise bothered him, Medvedev was frank about the added pressures of being a top player. He replied: “No I don’t think so but it’s just good to do it sometimes for yourself.
“To remind yourself that you have to do it sometimes because the more popular you become the more fans you get, the more haters you get, the more attention you get and sometimes even the good noise can make you off balance.”
Giving an extreme example, he added: “You win everything and everyone thinks you’re a god and stuff like this. Then you lose two matches and everyone is like, finished. Your career is finished. Sometimes it’s good to just block it and I managed to do it well today.”
The former world No. 1 will take the same approach into his third and final group match against Jannik Sinner on Thursday. Medvedev still has a chance of making it out of the round-robin stage and into the semi-final depending on his performance and his rivals’ results.
“I went into it saying, I don’t care much. I will try to play my best, I’ll see how it goes. I do double faults? Doesn’t matter, I don’t do perfect. I just took pressure off myself and this will never work throughout the whole season. This is a very tricky thing to do and usually you go down,” he told Sky Sports.
“But when you have two matches left and just lost a very bad one, it might be the solution sometimes. It worked today so I’m just going to continue doing it for this last tournament.”
Content Source: www.express.co.uk