NEW YORK, March 12. /TASS/. Russia’s top tennis player Daniil Medvedev is through to the quarterfinals of the 2025 Indian Wells Open after defeating Tommy Paul of the United States in the Round of 16.
In a match that lasted one hour and 14 minutes, Russia’s 5th-seeded Medvedev, who is playing at the tournament under a neutral status, breezed past the 10th-seeded Paul in straight sets 6-4; 6-0 and is now set to battle for the place in the semifinals against French Arthur Fils (20th-seed).
Medvedev, who lost to Paul last year at a tennis tournament in Rome, said after today’s match "We've actually had up and down matches so far that we've played."
"The first one was really close, then he beat me easy and now I managed to beat him a bit easier," the ATP official website quoted the Russian player as saying.
"I'm happy with my game. It's not easy to play here. Breaks of serve — of course we still win more serves than we we lose — but breaks of serves don't mean much here," Medvedev noted. "So even when he came back in the first, I was like, 'Try pushing, try going further.' I managed to raise my level during the match, so I'm pretty happy about it."
Speaking about his next opponent, 20-year-old Arthur Fils, Medvedev said: "He plays good. I watched his matches here, he's in good shape."
"In quarterfinals of an ATP Masters 1000 you never get an easy match. I'll try my best," he said. "We only played once [in Vienna in 2023], he was younger, so kind of a different matchup right now. I'll need to be at my best to try to win."
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 Indian Wells tournament is played on outdoor hard courts at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in California, the United States, between March 5 and 16 and offers almost $9.6 million and $8.9 million in prize money in men and women’s events correspondingly. Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz and Poland’s Iga Swiatek are the reigning champions in men and women’s competitions respectively.
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.