Taylor Fritz made an astute observation about Daniil Medvedev after beating him at the ATP Finals.
The American made a strong start to his second season-ending championships by winning his first match of the round robin stage.
Fritz has enjoyed a consistent 2024 season in which he advanced to his first Grand Slam final at the US Open.
Now the 27-year-old aims to finish what has been a long and gruelling campaign by lifting the ATP Finals trophy for the first time.
At the ATP Finals Taylor Fritz took on Daniil Medvedev for just the second time in their careers. Their first match came back at the 2022 Cincinnati Masters.
Fritz won 85% of his first serve points on his way to becoming the fourth player to win 50 or more matches in 2024.
He capitalised on multiple errors from Medvedev, who tried to play a more aggressive game and committed seven double faults in the opening set.
At one point the Russian lost his cool as he repeatedly threw his racket in the air and even pretended to return serve with his racket facing the wrong way.
Fritz overcame Medvedev’s antics to record a 6-4, 6-3 win in and post-match he commented on Medvedev’s different approach to the match and how he responded to it.
“It was a very tight match,” Fritz said. “He had break chances on me. I had return chances on him, it could have gone either way. I was able to save break points with some of those long rallies, I just fought through.
“It was very encouraging [to be able to win the longer rallies]. He is so good from the baseline. I felt like he was much more aggressive today, which makes a bit of sense, he didn’t want me to get time to attack and control the points and he wanted to get me moving and be aggressive.
“But in all of the rallies I didn’t really see anything I liked too much to pull the trigger on. So when I saw it, I attacked and when I didn’t I was happy to run and play defence and I thought I did a solid job of showing him that I wasn’t going to give him a lot of free points.”
Medvedev is one of the best baseline players in the game but he now seems to be trying up his aggression against his opponents.
From his recent matches Medvedev has committed more unforced errors as he looks to be aggressive and proactive in matches.
Medvedev struck 17 winners and made 24 unforced errors in his first defeat to Fritz at the ATP Finals.
During his defeat to Carlos Alcaraz in Beijing, the Russian committed 21 unforced errors, and made a further 25 against Jannik Sinner in Shanghai and staggering 42 errors against Alexei Popyrin in Paris.
Medvedev is not afraid to go for more on the second serve, but he has served 22 over the course of his last two matches. This is something Medvedev will need to fix over the course of next two group matches at the ATP Finals.
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