Medvedev broke Djokovic twice in the primary set and once more to open the second, finally closing it out on his first match level.
| Photo Credit: AP
Daniil Medvedev ended Novak Djokovic’s 20-match profitable streak by beating the world’s top-ranked participant 6-4, 6-4 to attain the final on the Dubai Championships on Friday.
The third-seeded Medvedev will face defending champion Andrey Rublev in an all-Russian final of the hard-court match.
The former No. 1 participant picked up trophies in Rotterdam and Doha earlier than coming to Dubai and beating Djokovic to prolong his profitable streak to 13 matches, the second longest of his profession.
Medvedev broke Djokovic twice in the primary set and once more to open the second, finally closing it out on his first match level.
Medvedev hadn’t crushed Djokovic for the reason that 2021 U.S. Open final for his first — and solely — main title. That win denied Djokovic the primary calendar-year Grand Slam in males’s singles since 1969.
Djokovic then received their subsequent 4 conferences.
But Medvedev improved to 5-3 towards Djokovic when the Serb is ranked first.
Djokovic was competing in his first occasion since profitable the Australian Open for his record-equaling twenty second Grand Slam singles title. He hadn’t misplaced since November when he dropped the Paris Masters final to Holger Rune.
Earlier, Rublev superior by beating Alexander Zverev 6-3, 7-6 (9) in the opposite semifinal. He wanted six match factors to lastly put away Zverev for his first tour-level win over the German.
Rublev misplaced all 5 earlier matches towards his longtime pal, who reached his first semifinal for the reason that French Open final June.
The sixth-ranked Rublev saved a set level in the second-set tiebreaker.
“Today, when I was going on court, I was thinking I have nothing to lose. He always beat me, so why I need to be tight,” Rublev stated.
Last yr, he beat Jiri Vesely for the title.
Rublev has crushed Medvedev the final two occasions they squared off together with on the ATP Finals final November.
That match is best remembered for Rublev’s attraction for peace. He wrote “Peace, Peace, Peace, All we need,” on a TV digital camera lens. He made an identical attraction shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine simply over a yr in the past.
