Daniil Medvedev
Medvedev looking for answers after another early Cincinnati defeat

Former champion has won just one match in two years in Cincinnati and Canada

August 10, 2025

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Daniil Medvedev is 19th in the PIF ATP Live Race to Turin.
By ATP Staff

Daniil Medvedev cut a forlorn figure sitting in his courtside chair, water bottle in hand, staring vacantly at the court between his outstretched legs moments after Sunday’s opening-round loss to Adam Walton at the Cincinnati Open.

Absent was the feistiness and anger that often accompanies a loss. This time, after almost two-and-a-half hours of toil in the brutal Ohio heat and humidity, he looked utterly drained, both mentally and physically.

Despite winning the first set tie-break without dropping a point and hitting 41 winners, including 18 aces, Medvedev fell 6-7(0), 6-4, 6-1 to the World No. 85.

The US summer used to be one of his favourite swings of the year. But after last year losing his opening-round matches in Canada and Cincinnati, tournaments he has previously won and at which he has enjoyed several deeps runs, he won just one match in the two ATP Masters 1000s this year.

Just one of his 26 wins this season have come in the majors and, at 19th in the PIF ATP Live Race to Turin, his hopes of qualifying for the seventh consecutive time for the Nitto ATP Finals, which he won in 2020, are fading fast.

Medvedev addressed his modest form recently at the Mubadala Citi DC Open in Washington, D.C., when he spoke exclusively to ATPTour.com.

“It’s very tough in tennis, because I could find 10 reasons and I would not know which one is the main reason,” Medvedev said of his form. “Whatever we do, we just try to improve. So we sat down with the team: Where can we do things better? What can we change? We discussed some things and I’m going to try and implement it.

“This is the most exciting part of the season, there is hard courts until Miami next year. So I will try to give my best and enjoy it. It’s an opportunity, I want to take it as a challenge of trying to raise my level in the big occasions, trying to go step by step.”

Medvedev is next scheduled to play at the US Open, where in 2021 he won his lone Grand Slam title to deny Novak Djokovic a calendar-year Grand Slam.

Walton, the 26-year-old from Brisbane, is enjoy a breakout year on Tour. He had just three tour-level match wins coming into the season. He is 11-13 on the 2025 season, according to Infosys ATP Stats. He next plays Czech No. 22 seed Jiri Lehecka.