DOHA, February 19. /TASS/. Russia’s top racquet Daniil Medvedev won again at the 2025 Qatar Open tennis tournament on Wednesday.
In a match that lasted less than an hour, the 5th-seeded Medvedev breezed past Belgium’s Zizou Bergs 6-2; 6-1 to earn his 300th hard-court win on the ATP tour.
The Russian, who is playing under a neutral status at the tournament, now moves on to the quarterfinals, where he will face Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime.
Medvedev, 29, is currently sixth in the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Rankings. In 2022, the top Russian racquet 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 2025 Qatar Open Tennis tournament is a WTA-ranked 500 competition on the organization’s calendar and it takes place at the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash complex in Doha, Qatar, between February 17 and 22. The tournament is played on outdoor hard courts. Russia’s Karen Khachanov is the reigning champion.
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 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.