NEW YORK, September 5. /TASS/. Russia’s top tennis player Daniil Medvedev has reached the quarterfinals stage of the US Open tennis tournament, which kicked off in New York on August 28.
Medvedev, seeded 3rd at the tournament, cleared the 4th round of the prestigious Grand Slam tournament in the United States winning 2-6; 6-4; 6-1; 6-2 late on Monday night over Australia’s Alex de Minaur (seeded 13th).
He is now set to face off in the quarterfinals against his compatriot Andrey Rublev, who outplayed on September 4 Jack Draper from England chalking up the win of 6-3; 3-6; 6-3; 6-4.
Medvedev, 27, is currently third in the ATP Rankings List. In 2022, the Russian was the number one ranked tennis player in the world for 16 weeks. He is the 2021 US Open Champion and has 20 ATP tournament titles under his belt. He has won five of those 20 titles this year. Also, in 2021, he won the Davis Cup as well as the ATP Cup playing for the Russian national team.
Rublev, 25, is currently ranked 8th in the ATP World Rankings and has 14 ATP tournament titles to his name, two of those wins coming this year. He has also appeared in numerous Grand Slam tournaments, albeit never advancing beyond the quarterfinals. While playing for the Russian national team, he took home the gold at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo in mixed doubles (with teammate Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova) and also won the 2021 Davis Cup.
The 2023 US Open is being held on outdoor hard courts at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York between August 28 and September 10. The tournament has $65 mln in prize money up for grabs. Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz and Poland’s Iga Swiatek are the tournament's defending champions in men’s and women's singles, respectively.
Tennis players from Russia and Belarus are participating at this year's Open under a neutral status due to the current sanctions regime.
Russian players’ neutral status at tennis tournaments
On February 28, 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations to international sports federations to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from taking part in international tournaments, citing Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine as the reason.
Following the IOC’s recommendations in late February 2022, the majority of global sports federations decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from all international sports tournaments.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) ruled on March 1, 2022 to suspend the membership of the Russian and Belarusian national tennis federations while also cancelling all previously scheduled tennis tournaments in the two countries.
On March 14, 2022, the ITF also confirmed its prohibition on the Russian and Belarusian national tennis teams from taking part in the 2022 Davis Cup and 2022 Billie Jean King Cup.
However, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) allowed tennis players from Russia and Belarus to continue participating in WTA and ATP tournaments, but only under a neutral status.