Daniil Medvedev ‘should be ready for Roland Garros’ as he gives his verdict after Geneva Open defeat

French Open
Daniil Medvedev in action

He felt fine physically during his first match in six weeks, but Daniil Medvedev admits he was not “in the zone” as he went down against Richard Gasquet at the Geneva Open.

Playing for the first time since undergoing a small procedure to treat a hernia, Medvedev didn’t really get into top gear as he suffered a 6-2, 7-6 (7-5) defeat in 90 minutes against Gasquet.

After getting off to a decent start in the first set, the world No 2 lost his way as he was broken in games five and seven. Gasquet then also broke in the opening game of the second set, but Medvedev was back on serve in game six only to then lose the tie-breaker.

“It’s tough. I don’t play my best tennis on clay courts. I know that I am capable of making some good results as I did in the past. But for this, I kind of need to be in the zone, which I was not today,” the reigning US Open champion told the official ATP website.

“When I’m not in the zone on hard courts, sometimes during the tournament, during the match, I can try to turn it around and sometimes it doesn’t happen.

“On clay [it is] much tougher and usually from what I remember most of the matches — not all of them, but most of them — I’m losing because it’s tough for me to turn something around unless everything goes well straightaway and that’s what happened today.”

Medvedev will head to next week’s French Open having played only one match on clay this year, but he was in decent shape physically after six weeks on the sidelines.

“Physically I felt not bad today. I think more days of practice and [I] should be ready for Roland Garros because physically, even right now, my body feels good.

“Let’s see tomorrow morning, because I haven’t played [a tournament] for one month and a half, maybe two months,” he said. “Hopefully tomorrow morning it’s going to be good also.

“[I will] have some days of practice before Roland Garros so I’m going to try to work physically and also tennis-wise. Hopefully I can try to find the game I had there last year, which is not going to be easy.”

Daniil Medvedev Richard Gasquet

Latest