PREVIEW: 2023 ATP – Nitto ATP Finals – Daniil Medvedev vs Andrey Rublev

Daniil Medvedev 51/100 | Andrey Rublev 31/20

This promises to be an exhilarating all-Russian baseline slugfest. Daniil Medvedev has enjoyed a rather curious season. He currently sits at 64-16 for the year, leading the entire field in total matches won in 2023.

He has won five tournaments this season and he recently reached his 4th Grand Slam final in New York (losing pretty heavily to Djokovic in the final). But four of Medvedev’s five titles came during a golden spell towards the beginning of the season and he actually hasn’t won a title since Rome.

He recently lost to Sinner in both the Beijing and Vienna finals and he is fresh off a dispiriting defeat to Dimitrov in the first round of the Paris Masters. So, his recent form is certainly not as imperious as peak Medvedev.

But it would be unwise to doubt the wily 27-year-old. Medvedev has shown his big-match temperament before, winning the 2021 US Open and claiming this title in 2020.

Granted, he did win this event in appreciatively slower conditions at London’s O2 Arena. But he adapted pretty well to the brisk Turin conditions, finishing runner-up when the event was first staged here in 2021. He then surprisingly went on to lose all three of his group matches last season.

I think that Medvedev can be the victim of his own success on occasion, running out of petrol in certain events due to his sheer workload. Medvedev absolutely dominated on serve when he won this title in 2020 and he will need that weapon to fire this week as he looks for a 2nd season-ending title.

I do think these court conditions are actually detrimental to Medvedev. He is one of the premier hardcourt players in the world- there’s no doubt about that. But the sheer velocity of these courts- amplified by the high-altitude- mean that his renowned defensive capabilities are mitigated to a certain extent. The bigger hitters will penetrate the court and his counterpunching style can be neutralized.

Andrey Rublev is like the Little Engine that Could, careening from one Grand Slam disappointment to the next but still managing to collect enough points to reach four successive ATP Finals.

That’s pretty impressive stuff for a guy widely castigated for lacking BMT. I do think that Rublev has made some strides on that front. He reached the semi-finals of this event for the first time in his career last season, highlighting just how comfortable he can look amongst illustrious opposition.

That performance really highlighted how comfortable he is on these ultra-slick surfaces. And this year he managed another seismic breakthrough (though not in the manner in which many would have excepted). He won his maiden Masters 1000 title on clay-courts of Monte-Carlo, debunking the notion that he is purely a hardcourt operator.

And Rublev has really looked extremely sharp in these closing salvos of the season. He reached yet another Masters 1000 final in Shanghai (actually surrendering a match-point against Sinner in the final). He has also reached semi-finals in quick indoor arenas in Paris and Vienna.

Currently sitting at 56-23 for the season, Rublev knows that he has the ability to turn a really solid season into a great one with success this week. He occasionally lacks the self-belief of an elite player but this week could be a chance for him to alter that perception (until the next Grand Slam, that is).

Verdict: Rublev to win in three at 44/10

Medvedev currently owns a commanding 6-2 head-to-record against his compatriot. Rublev doesn’t tend to play well against the most efficient counterpunchers (just look at his frankly appalling record against counterpunching maestro Novak Djokovic).

But I do feel that these courts will allow the aggressive Rublev to get maximum purchase off his groundstrokes and Medvedev might not be able to retrieve as much as he usually does. In fact, Rubelv beat Medvedev in a three-set thriller in last year’s group stages. Rublev is in strong from and I can see him overcoming Medvedev in another thriller.