"I was not confident" - Medvedev after another dominant victory in Paris
ATP
Daniil Medvedev shared his assessment following his dominant second-round win over Laslo Djere at the 2022 Roland Garros.
Before this month, there were doubts about Medvedev's involvement in the second Grand Slam of the season. The Russian underwent a hernia operation after losing to Hubert Hurkacz in the quarterfinal of the Miami Open and missed a huge chunk of the clay swing.
Medvedev returned to action at the ATP 250 event in Geneva, where he looked woefully short of match fitness as he lost to veteran Richard Gasquet in his opening match. That proved to be his only warm-up tournament and match before the French Open.
On the eve of his opening match, the World No. 2 told reporters that he "could lose against anybody" partly because of his lack of match sharpness and also because he doesn't particularly love playing on clay.
But Medvedev has been taking it one match at a time and is expending all his energy on Roland Garros. He doesn't have any commitments to play any grass-court tournaments because of the ban imposed on Russian players at Wimbledon.
After seeing off Facundo Bagnis in his opening match in straight sets, Medvedev was expected to face his sternest test at the tournament by the second-round stage against Serbian clay-court specialist Laslo Djere.
But it was the error-prone version of Djere that turned up, committing 68 unforced errors during the match. Medvedev's relentless defense proved enough to seal the victory but he was still critical of himself.
"Today I think to be honest, Laslo was playing the better clay-court tennis. But I managed to fight and just put one more ball in the court than him and it was a very tough match, but I am happy to win."
"I tried to make him play more balls and he either makes a mistake or a winner and I was not confident [in the third set] as it is only one break and one break is nothing. I just tried to focus and play every point."
