PARIS (Reuters) – Fresh from his maiden claycourt title at the Rome Masters, Daniil Medvedev is however taking nothing for granted before starting his French Open campaign at Roland Garros.
The world number two, who has only recently improved on the slowest surface, has been finding his range on the red dirt to the point that he is now cited as one of the favourites to lift the Musketeers’ cup on June 11.
“It’s an amazing feeling, and I for sure have more expectations than I usually had at Roland Garros,” the Russian told reporters on Friday.
“But I know that it’s also tricky. You have to use this confidence, but not get cocky, if we can say, because that’s where the danger is.
“Sometimes you think, oh, well, I played so well, now it’s going to be easy. Then the first round you have problems. You can get angry and maybe lose the match.”
The key for Medvedev will be to put his recent success behind him without putting too much pressure on himself when he starts his tournament against a qualifier.
“Tennis is such a mental sport sometimes that you talk to your friends on tour and many times you start to have, let’s call it, superstitions that sometimes the better you play before the tournament, the worse it’s going to be,” he explained.
“Sometimes the worse you play before the tournament, it happened to me also, where you can even break a racquet on practice or something, get completely crazy and you cannot put one ball in the court, and then you win it.”
(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
