Djokovic to face Medvedev next in China open

Yesterday, Novak Djokovic stunned the world by defeating world number 2 (by ATP rankings) Alexander Zverev after 3 sets. The betting world and the tennis world has once again underestimated the Serbian GOAT of tennis and wrote him off simply because he didn't win the US Open for the most part.

I don't understand why, but the press kind of turned on Novak about 5 years ago and seem to be hoping that he is going to crash and burn. I'm sort of joking about "not knowing." The press turned on Djokovic when he took a not-popular-with-the-media stance on Covid vaccination and the media relentlessly attacked him for this and I guess they are sticking with their guns and continuing to doubt him to this day.

Well, I don't think there is any way to doubt an athlete when he is one of the oldest winning players of all time and then comes out and eliminated the world number 2 in what looked to be relative ease.

It's not a Grand Slam, but the Chinese Open is kind of on the next tier of things as far as prestige is concerned, and the world will probably be watching even though for most of the western world, the match time is going to be a really silly time of day to be watching TV due to time zones and the fact that the match will be taking place in China.

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The other guy that will be playing in this match is my personal favorite player Daniil Medvedev. This guy used to get a lot of hate from the press as well because he has the misfortune of being Russian and the press went after him over and over again trying to get him to denounce his own country. He refused to do so for obvious reasons such as getting his passport revoked if he were to do so and the ravenous media turned this into a witch hunt. They were successful briefly in getting him and other Russian / Belarusian players banned from Wimbledon, but this was quickly reversed after a majority of fans saw this ban as what it was: A bunch of political BS that has no business being in sports.

We don't get to see these two juggernauts face off against one another very often and this is mostly because of the fact that Daniil has been in pretty terrible form (for a man of his caliber) for the past few years.

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For a while there, he was a lot more likely to blow his top and smash his own equipment in a tantrum after performing poorly than he was to actually progress very far in a tournament and over the past several years he hasn't won any majors and would even crash out in rather minor tournaments. He has seen his form turn a bit as of late and has battled his way back into the top-10 in the world.

For many including me, this semi-final in China is the true "final" of the tournament due to the fact that a lot of the other big names in tennis chose to not attend it at all, and because the other two guys that are left are not really in the limelight as far as popularity is concerned.

These two have met up in their careers a total of 15 times with Djokovic winning 10 of them. However, it is important to note that in the past 6 of those matchups, Medvedev has won 3 of them. They haven't met since 2023, where Djokovic won.

Medvedev's most famous defeat of Djokovic is when he "spoiled" Novak's winning of all the Grand Slams in a calendar year by defeating him in the US Open final back in 2021.

The China Open is a hard court surface, which is where the two of them end up playing one another most often and this is because of the fact that Daniil tends to not do as well on any other surface.

At the moment the bookies are giving Medvedev a slight edge in predicting the win but a lot of this has to do with the fact that the media world always underestimates Novak Djokovic because of his age. He's nearly 40 years old but we also need to look at the fact that Daniil is no spring chicken at 30 years of age as well. He is the 3rd oldest player in the top-30 of ATP rankings.

Medvedev is on a 7 match winning streak, but if history tells us anything about these two, Djokovic is often able to find his weak points!