PARIS, November 1. /TASS/. Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov has knocked out Russia’s top tennis player Daniil Medvedev from the 2023 ATP (the Association of Tennis Professionals) Paris Masters Tournament, which kicked off on Sunday in France.
In their 2nd round match on Wednesday, which lasted over two hours and 50 minutes, the unseeded Dimitrov edged the 3rd-seeded Medvedev with the final score of 6-3; 6-7 (4-7); 7-6 (7-2).
The ATP website quoted Dimitrov as saying during his post-match interview: "At 5-4 and 40/15, I just didn’t go enough for my shots. That’s it, and against a player like him, he’s going to take it, simple as that. I could have done a few things differently."
"Obviously, it’s very different when you see it from the outside now, but I’m going to watch a little bit for sure," he continued. "I want to see what I could have done a little bit better since I was playing a good game and to get up to 5-4, 40/15, I thought I played an excellent game with very good shot selection. It slipped there, but a good outcome in the end."
Dimitrov, 32, is currently 17th in the ATP Rankings having won a total of eight ATP tournaments, and he is now set to play in the next round of the tournament against 26-year-old Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan (33rd in the ATP Rankings).
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.
The 2023 Paris Masters tournament is an ATP Masters 1,000 event and is being played on indoor hard courts at the Accor Arena in Paris between October 30 and November 5. The tournament offers 2.779 million euros (over $2.9 million) in prize money.
The tournament’s reigning champion is Holger Rune of Denmark. Notable Russians to win the tournament in Paris include Marat Safin (2000, 2002, 2004), Nikolai Davydenko (2006), Karen Khachanov (2018) and Daniil Medvedev (2020).
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.