SHANGHAI, October 10. /TASS/. The world’s top-ranked player Jannik Sinner of Italy knocked Russia’s top racket Daniil Medvedev out of the 2024 Shanghai Masters tennis tournament on Thursday.
Medvedev, who is playing at the tournament under a neutral status, lost his quarterfinal match to Sinner 1-6; 4-6.
"Obviously I’m very happy how I handled today and this match," the official ATP website quoted Sinner as saying after the match.
"It felt like he had a bit of shoulder pain and couldn’t hit his forehand as well as he wished to," Sinner continued. "Hopefully he can recover as fast as possible, but from my side it was a great match, a great battle, and let’s see what I can do now in the semi-finals."
Medvedev, 28, is currently fifth in the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Rankings. In 2022, the top Russian racket spent sixteen weeks as the number one player in the world. He is the 2021 US Open Champion and has 20 ATP tournament titles under his belt. He won five of these 20 titles in 2023. Also, in 2021, he won the Davis Cup as well as the ATP Cup playing for the Russian national team.
The 2024 Shanghai Masters has the ATP 1,000 classification and it is played on outdoor hard courts at Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena in Shanghai, China between October 2 and 13, 2024. The tournament offers $8.9 million in prize money and its reigning champion is Hubert Hurkacz of Poland.
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 canceling 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.