Daniil Medvedev is fighting various injuries at the 2023 Indian Wells but he always gets up, quite literally, and keeps fighting.
In his fourth-round match, the Russian rolled his ankle against Alexander Zverev, but still, he battled through and won the match. It wasn't sure if he'll play against Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in the quarterfinals because of this injury, but he did and said more about it afterwards.
"I'm actually happy the ankle didn't hurt much because when I warmed up, it was hurting pretty bad. I knew I was going to play, I knew I was going to try. But I couldn't move well on the warm-up. I tried to warm it up as long as possible, took one painkiller so that probably helped. I was actually feeling better and better during the match."
"The thing is that yesterday evening, I was not able to walk. When the body cools down, the adrenaline comes out, it's tough. I was walking in the pool just to try to walk anywhere because I couldn't walk on the ground any more."
After already successfully playing with an ankle injury, Medvedev picked up yet another one. This time, before winning his 18th consecutive match and reaching the semifinals, he slipped on the court and cut his thumb open.
"I absolutely cut it open. It was like fully open. I never cut myself with a knife even like this because I don't cook much. Now it's getting black. I don't know if it's a good sign. The moment I cut it, I saw, I don't know if I should say it, kind of the meat. That was not nice to see. They cleaned it now. I have a small tape. Should be fine."
After getting his finger taped, only a few rallies later, the former world no. 1 made a decision to play without it, but it wasn't a good one. The finger started bleeding once again and he needed another medical time out.
"I never play with the tape. It's tough to feel the racquet. So I was like, 'I'm going to try to play without the tape.' Next game, I start, I feel like on the forehand I couldn't hold the racquet, so I said let's tape it. That's not easy and I don't like it to take medical [timeouts] like this, but I had to [do it] and hopefully I can recover."
Up next, Medvedev will play against Frances Tiafoe, who reached his first Masters 1000 semifinals and will be surely a big challenge for the Russian.
"He's playing great. Frances is a very pumped-up, fiery player, so he can beat anyone on a good day. I'm sure he can beat Novak, Rafa. He actually did beat Rafa in the US Open, which is huge. For sure I need to try my best to keep this head-to-head at zero. That's never easy and I just have to show my best tennis and try to beat such a great opponent."
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