Daniil Medvedev on his short stint at No 1: ‘Is it better to be No 1 for one week in your life or never touch it?’

ATP Tour
Daniil Medvedev antics

His stint at the top of the ATP Rankings turned out to be quite short, but Daniil Medvedev is determined to regain the world No 1 spot at the earliest opportunity.

On the back of his runners-up finish at the Australian Open and coupled with Novak Djokovic being absent from the Tour, Medvedev replaced the Serbian at the top at the end of February.

However, his shock 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 third-round defeat at the hands of Gael Monfils at the BNP Paribas Open on Monday means that he will be bumped off top spot by Djokovic when the rankings are updated next week.

The reigning US Open champion was at a loss over his inability to find a rhythm in Indian Wells, but he will have an opportunity to return to No 1 at the Miami Open.

“Definitely not pressure. I thought it could give me more motivation, well, I had motivation. It’s just that, yeah, as I say, I didn’t find my best tennis,” he said.

“Now I know I’m going to lose it, so I have Miami to try to get it back. Usually feeling a little bit better in Miami in terms of tennis, so we’ll try to play good there. I always say, when I play my best tennis, my good tennis, it’s really tough to beat me.

“But that’s the toughest part of tennis is to reproduce it time after time. That’s where the Big Three are just unreal because no matter which conditions, no matter which surface, they are always winning tournaments a lot of the time or winning some crazy matches. I’m going to need to try to do better.”

Some players have had short stints at No 1 in the past as Pat Rafter spent only one week at the top and Carlos Moya two while Tomas Muster, Marcelo Rios and Yevgeny Kafelnikov were six weeks at the top.

Although he hopes to return to No 1, for now Medvedev feels it is “better to at least touch it” than to never have been No 1 in your life.

“I want to be there for a long time winning many Slams, be there as many weeks as possible. You never know how your career’s going to turn.

“I want to try to be better than I was here, maybe fighting better, because the third set was not good enough. So it’s kind of the same as just the previous question, is it better to be No 1 for let’s say one week in your life or never touch it? I think it’s still better to at least touch it.

“I’m going to try my best, on practice courts, on the matches, Grand Slams, Masters Series, to gain, to win as many tournaments and gain as many points and try to be world No 1 for long time.

“If it doesn’t happen, I think it’s the same, but the top 100, the top 10, some people stay there for long time, some people not. I think, to have this achievement in your career is definitely still a good thing, because when we talk about guys like Rafter and Moya, we still talk about them as ex No 1 and I actually, for example, I didn’t know how many weeks they were there, so if you don’t tell me I would say, I don’t know, maybe a year or something.”

Daniil Medvedev

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