With Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in the same half, Stefanos Tsitsipas started as one of the favourites to reach the French Open final ...
With Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in the same half, Stefanos Tsitsipas started as one of the favourites to reach the French Open final this year. He won the Monte Carlo Masters and Lyon Open in the run-up to Roland Garros and was expected to build on his form and handle his side of the draw.
And after dropping just a set in his first four matches, he faced his toughest test yet. The Greek was pitted against a tricky opponent – Daniil Medvedev.
Now, second seed and all that, but Medvedev isn’t exactly considered a force to reckon with on clay; after all he had not won a single match in four attempts at Roland Garros before this year. But he possesses enough firepower to test the best on his day.
Medvedev, too, had dropped just one set heading into the quarter-finals but more importantly, he held a 6-1 advantage over Tsitsipas in their head-to-head. Their most recent meeting, in the Australian Open semi-finals earlier this year, had resulted in a straight sets victory for the Russian.
But their quarter-final encounter at the French Open on Tuesday ended up serving a reminder of how far Tsitsipas has come in terms of his clay-court game. It was a clash between the world...
