MOSCOW, October 2. /TASS/. Top Russian tennis star Daniil Medvedev reached the semifinals of the 2023 China Open tournament, defeating France’s Ugo Humbert on Monday.

Second-seeded Medvedev outplayed his unseeded French opponent in the quarterfinals with a final score of 6-4; 3-6; 6-1. He is now set to face off in the semifinals against the winner of a match pitting eighth-seeded Alexander Zverev of Russia against unseeded Nicolas Jarry of Chile.

"I'm kind of happy that I managed to raise my level in important moments, except a game in the second set," the ATP’s official website quoted Medvedev as saying after the match. "It's great that I managed to still find in this tough match these moments of consistency, which is enough to win. That's what you have to do."

"I am happy to be in the semifinals," Medvedev, who is playing at the world tennis tournaments under a neutral status, continued. "When you come to the tournament, you always want to go as far as possible."

"Happy to still be here tomorrow. The further we go, the tougher the matches, the tougher the opponents. That's normal," the Russian tennis player added.

Medvedev, 27, is currently third in the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Rankings List. In 2022, the top Russian racket 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 just this year. Also, in 2021, he won the Davis Cup as well as the ATP Cup playing for the Russian national team.

Umbert, 25, currently holds 36th place in the ATP Rankings and is the winner of three ATP tournaments. The French tennis player’s best result in the Grand Slam series was in the quarterfinals round of the 2019 Wimbledon games.

The 2023 China Open is ranked as the ATP 500 tournament and is being played on outdoor hard courts in Beijing between September 28 and October 4 with a purse of $3.6 million in prize money up for grabs. The current tournament in China is the first since 2019 as it had been cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic due to anti-coronavirus restrictions. The reigning champion of the 2019 China Open is Austria’s Dominic Thiem.

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.