Former tennis star and current legend, Mats Wilander has given his opinion as to why Rafael Nadal beat Daniil Medvedev two straight times within the span of 30 days. The current World no. 1, Medvedev and current World no. 4, Rafael Nadal met twice on a major stage, first in the Australian Open finals, which saw Nadal pull a rabbit out of his hat as he bounced back from an almost impossible 2 set deficit to win the thrilling five setter and his 21st Grand Slam.
The second time the Russian and the Spaniard met was over in Mexico in the semi finals of the Acapulco Open. The two are scheduled to be at the Indian Wells as well which starts on the 8th of March in California.
“I think that you can be No.
1 in different ways. I feel like Daniil Medvedev deserves to be there, but to really go out and be looked upon as the best player in the world every day, he most probably needs to win a couple more Grand Slams while he is No.
1 in the world,” Wilander told Eurosport. “But that’s how the ranking works. That’s how the computer works and if you play a lot of tournaments and you’re consistent, you deserve to be there,” he added.
“But it must never be confused with being the best player in the world today and being the best player consistently over the last 12 months. There’s a huge difference between the two.” The Swede went on to claim that the Russian “has some distance to go” before he can be compared to the likes of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic when they were No.
1. “[Daniil Medvedev lost] to Rafael Nadal in Acapulco in very humid conditions – the tennis balls are not flying through the air as quickly as they do in Australia and when they do hit the court, they stop skidding through the court because the surface was very slow,” Wilander said.
“So in Acapulco, I can easily explain why Medvedev lost because of the conditions.”