Medvedev recovers from surgery
While the Masters was still going on in Miami, World No. 2 Daniil Medvedev announced that he had taken a break from his performances for surgery for a hernia. He did not elaborate on any details, but a couple of hours later posted a photo from the hospital of him watching the English Premier League on his computer. “Recovering, but continuing to watch. Can you guess who’s playing?” – Daniel wrote. You could have guessed from this message that all went well.
Experts debated vigorously how long Medvedev was out of the lineup. Mostly two opinions stood out. The first one was that he might miss the entire primetime season, including Roland Garros. This is not surprising, because Daniil can’t stand playing on that surface. But there were opinions that Medvedev might not play at Wimbledon either. As we know, there is a big talk going on right now in the closet of the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world about not letting Russian tennis players play. If Medvedev’s team decides to skip the grass season as well in order not to waste their energy on defending their rights.
For a while there was no news about Daniil, but fans found him in one of the restaurants in Milan and even posted his photo in the network. But the tennis player kept silent. Finally, Medvedev shared on his social networks how his recovery was going: “It’s been a week since I had surgery. I feel much better. In a few days I’m going to start doing pull-ups. Right now only PlayStation training is possible.”
FTR President Shamil Tarpishchev believes the Russian tennis leader’s recovery is on schedule: “We are communicating with Medvedev, the recovery is on schedule. As expected he’ll miss about a month. And it’s a question of how long he will be in shape. We hope he’ll be ready for Roland Garros.
While Medvedev is in reserve, the top-ranked player is Novak Djokovic, who will play his debut clay-court match this season on Tuesday. And by the end of April, the Serb will be pulling away from the Russian, who will have a slightly faster points burnout. If now there is a 10-point gap between them, at the end of April the difference between them will be 160 points without taking into account the points scored by Djokovic at new tournaments. But by Monday, May 9, Medvedev could very well overtake the Serb! Djokovic will lose 500 points for Madrid 2019 on that day. If Novak doesn’t fill the gap, Medvedev will become the world No. 1 again.
Djokovic himself admitted that he didn’t expect that he could once again top the rankings with virtually no play. After all, he has only played in Dubai since the beginning of 2022. “I didn’t expect to be world number one with hardly any play this season. I guess I got lucky. But I’m glad. I’ll try to stay in first place as long as possible,” Novak said before the start of the Masters in Monte Carlo. The Serb has won this tournament twice (2013, 2015), and in the absence of the injured Nadal, he is determined to achieve a successful result here.
As No. 1 seed, Djokovic missed the first round and will play Spain’s Alejandro Davidovic-Fokina in the second round on Tuesday, April 12.
