UNITED STATES. New York: The World No.1 34-year-old Serbian Novak Djokovic’s dream of winning all the four grand slams in a year was shattered by Daniil Medvedev’s brilliant straight-set match. The 25-year-old Russian won his maiden grand slam title with a straight-set of 6-4, 6-4, 6-4, in the US Open men’s singles final held on Sunday.
Medvedev, the 2019 US Open runner-up, won his first Grand Slam title in his third Slam finals quashing Djokovic’s bid to sweep the US, French, Australian Open, and Wimbledon in the same year. The 83-year-old Australian legend Rod Laver who happened to be watching the finals sitting inside the Arthur Ashe Stadium did it 52 years ago.
Medvedev became the third Russian to win a Grand Slam title after Yevgeny Kafelnikov at the 1996 French Open and 1999 Australian Open and Marat Safin at the 2000 US Open and 2005 Australian Open.
Daniil Medvedev
Born in Moscow in the year 1996, Medvedev is a Russian professional tennis player. He is currently ranked World No. 2 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). He has won 13 ATP Tour singles titles, including the 2021 US Open and the 2020 ATP Finals. In 2016, Medvedev won his first singles match at the 2016 Ricoh Open. Medvedev also won his first ATP titles at Sydney and Winston-Salem, and his first ATP 500 title in Tokyo in 2018. He defeated No. 1 Djokovic, No. 2 Nadal, and No. 3 Thiem at the 2020 Nitto ATP Finals to become the first player to sweep the top 3 in the tournament history and anywhere on ATP Tour since 2007. He also won 12 of his 13 singles titles on hard courts. Medvedev was also the runner-up at the 2019 US Open and the 2021 Australian Open.
US Open Tennis Tournament
The US National was first played in the year 1881 with two categories namely, men’s singles and men’s doubles. The current and modern version of the old tournament has five championships namely, men’s and women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles, and mixed doubles. The US Open starts on the last Monday of August and continues for two weeks. Initially a grass court tournament, the US Open is now a hard court tournament.
Arthur Ashe Stadium, part of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center at Flushing Meadow, Corona Park in Queens, New York City is the main stadium of the US Open tennis tournament. It has a capacity of 23,771 spectators making it the largest tennis stadium in the world. The stadium is named after Arthur Ashe, the winner of the 1968 inaugural US Open.
The open era started in the year 1968 when professional tennis players were allowed to compete. 10 years later, the tournament moved from the West Side Tennis Club to the larger and newly constructed USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, Queens.
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