NEW BAD BOY OF TENNIS
Love him or hate him, Medvedev’s the...
If they ever try turning this edition of the US Open into a sitcom it would probably end up as a remake of Men Behaving Badly. from day one there have been instances of the men getting on the wrong side of the crowds or the rules, above and beyond what is normally the most fractious of the Grand Slams. the humidity, abrasive New york crowds, constant noise and the fact that it comes as the last event in a gruelling summer all contribute to it stretching the emotions.
even the saintly Roger federer joined in after his victory over Dan evans, turning the air blue when declaring that he was sick of hearing the ‘s***’ about him lobbying to play at certain times.
the ultimate example of this year’s trend is Daniil Medvedev, who plays Grigor Dimitrov tonight in an attempt to reach his first major final. Rafael Nadal faces Italian Matteo Berrettini in the other semi-final.
Giving the crowd a surreptitious finger, urging them to keep booing him at the end of matches,
the 6ft 6in Russian has emerged as an anti-hero, two years after Wimbledon fined him for throwing coins at an umpire.
there is, however, plenty of substance beneath the errant behaviour. he has shown that he can play, with a supremely clean and consistent baseline game that is hard to break down.
this may ultimately mark him out from the betterknown pantomime villain, Nick Kyrgios, who faces another suspension for describing the AtP as ‘corrupt’. Medvedev even has the patron saint of bad boys, John Mcenroe, purring in admiration: ‘this is the type of player we need out there challenging the top guys,’ the one-time Superbrat told Amazon Prime. ‘he’s embraced being the villain, I’m not sure he’ll want to do that his whole career, but talk about turning negatives into positives so far. he has got to be feeling absolutely amazing.’
there have been less predictable sources of aggravated attitudes on show. Doubles ace Mike Bryan was fined $10,000 for pointing his racket like a gun at a line judge and Novak Djokovic told a heckler during a practice session: ‘trust me, I’ll come and find you.’
In a relatively tranquil women’s event, Serena Williams was due to face elina Svitolina in one semi-final last night, while Canadian teenager Bianca Andreescu was up against Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic in the other.