The Russian tennis player Daniil Medvedev (3rd in the world) and the German Alexander Zverev (6th) won their respective matches against the Polish Hubert Hurkacz (9th) and the Spanish Carlos Alcaraz (2nd) to advance to the semifinals of the Open Australia, where they will meet for a place in the final.
Medvedev had a tremendous performance to defeat the Polish giant, who is going through the best moment of his career, 7-6 (4), 2-6, 6-3, 5-7 and 6-4, and took the victory mainly thanks to to the variants in his game that allowed him to deactivate the power of his rival’s blows in the most important moments.
This was the second match of the tournament in which Medvedev needed five sets to beat his rival. The other match in which the same thing happened was in the second round, when the Russian overcame a deficit of two sets to zero to beat the Finn Emil Ruusuvuori 3-6, 6- 7 (1), 6-4 , 7-6 (1) and 6-0.
In this way, Medvedev managed to get into the semi-finals of a Grand Slam for the third consecutive time: he already did it at Wimbledon, where he lost to Alcaraz in that instance, and at the US Open, with a defeat against the Serbian Novak Djokovic in the decisive match. .
Medvedev, who won the US Open in 2021 and became No. 1 in the world in 2022, is going for his first title in Australia, where he has already reached the final in 2021 and 2022.
Medvedev’s opponent in the semifinals will be Alexander Zverev, who played one of the best matches of his career to beat Alcaraz 6-1, 6-3, 6-7 (2) and 6-4.
The German overtook the Spaniard in the first two sets, committing very few unforced errors and taking advantage of his rival’s lack of aim.
It seemed that Zverev was going to easily close the match in the third set after having a 5-2 lead in games, but Alcaraz recovered and forced a fourth set after winning the tie-break.
In the fourth set, Alcaraz had opportunities to go 5-3 with his serve, but finally the German recovered, got a break and closed the match by holding his serve to seal the final 6-4.
This result also benefits the Serbian Djokovic, who ensured that he remained No. 1 in the world after the tournament.
The semifinal match between Zverev and Medvedev will be this Thursday night. If he wins, the Russian will displace Alcaraz from second place in the world ranking, while the German could surpass the Russian Andrey Rublev and become number 5 in the world.
The other semifinal will be played by the favorite Djokovic (1st) and the Italian Jannik Sinner (4th).
