MOSCOW, August 31. /TASS/. French tennis coach Gilles Cervara and Russian tennis player Daniil Medvedev have ended their collaboration, the former announced on Instagram (banned in Russia, owned by the Meta corporation, recognized as extremist in Russia).
In the opening round of the Grand Slam tournament in the United States last Sunday, the 13th-seeded Medvedev suffered a 6-3, 7-5, 6-7(5), 0-6, 6-4 defeat against unseeded Benjamin Bonzi from France.
"Our fantastic eight-season adventure together comes to an end. Like a symbolic wink of life, it’s after this US Open tournament that we end our collaboration," Cervara wrote in an English-language post.
Medvedev has emerged champion at 20 ATP tournaments under coach Cervara. In 2020, he won the ATP Finals. He also won the 2021 US Open. The Russian tennis player spent 16 weeks at number one in the world rankings in 2022. Medvedev will drop out of the ATP Top 15 for the first time since 2019.
Cervara, 44, has coached Medvedev since the summer of 2017. In 2019, the Frenchman was named the best coach of the season. Previously, he was a sparring partner with Russia’s Marat Safin, a two-time Grand Slam winner, Belgian Justine Henin, the former world number one who won seven Grand Slam titles, and Thomas Enqvist from Sweden, who reached the final of the 1999 Australian Open but lost to Yevgeny Kafelnikov of Russia.