Daniil Medvedev, Jannik Sinner’s toughest recent opponent, exits French Open in first round

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PARIS — Jannik Sinner’s path to the French Open final just got a bit smoother.

Daniil Medvedev, who has played Sinner as tough as anyone the past two months, lost his first-round match to Adam Walton of Australia Tuesday. In a three-and-a-half-hour duel, with all the bizarre twists, dips and flips that Medvedev’s opening matches at Roland Garros are famous for, Walton registered a 6-2, 1-6, 6-1, 1-6, 6-4 win with a scoreline as enigmatic as the man who landed on the short end of it.

Down the stretch, Medvedev, the No. 6 seed, looked to have finally wrestled control of the match from an opponent without much success in Grand Slams or on clay. Serving at 4-3 in the fifth set, Medvedev doomed himself with two poor, predictable drop shots. Walton had started to see them early long before that, but the quality had been too good for him to catch up with.

Walton pushed his way through the open door, then resisted Medvedev’s efforts to close it again. The Australian saved multiple break points at 4-4 to put the match on Medvedev’s racket. The Russian, who just 12 days ago had made life pretty miserable for Sinner during their Italian Open semifinal, fumbled it away, committing four consecutive errors: a drop shot that fell meekly into the net, a backhand drive volley that could have bounced, a double fault, and another drive volley long.

“Up and down match,” Walton said after his first win over a top-10 player.

Walton felt like Medvedev was rolling just three games from the finish line. He was a point away from going up a double-service break. Walton told himself to just keep it close. Then, as the match tightened, he held Medvedev off and sapped his momentum.

Medvedev’s loss opens the way for Sinner to have a reasonably stress-free stroll to the final, if such a thing exists. Ben Shelton is a potential quarterfinal opponent, but the fifth-seeded American hasn’t gotten close to Sinner lately. Felix Auger-Aliassime, the No. 4 seed, remains on his side of the draw, but clay has never been his forte.

As for Medvedev, this is the seventh time in 10 tries that he has lost in the first round at Roland Garros.

Medvedev said he’s not really sure why he struggles at the French Open. He generally benefits from slower, heavier conditions than the hot, dry weather in Paris this year, but his consistency at Grand Slams has also declined overall from earlier in his career. He said he has had trouble finding his rhythm in the early rounds. Also, he’s one of several top players who have complained over the years about the Wilson balls in Paris, who they say don’t have the same life and pop as the balls in the other Grand Slams, or other clay-court tournaments.

“My tennis depends on a couple of things that I cannot control, meaning if the ball doesn’t go, I don’t have the power to make it go like Jannik (Sinner),” he said. “He hits it full power. The ball goes, he just makes it a bit adjustment and doesn’t go full power. I go full power and if the ball doesn’t go, it doesn’t go.”

Medvedev also isn’t crazy about waking up early. He has said this for years. He ended up leading off the day on Court Suzanne Lenglen.

He knows this is a Medvedev problem, not a tennis problem.

“In tennis you need to adapt to things, and sometimes I’m not good enough to adapt to it, and sometimes I am,” he said. “That’s basically all I can tell you.”

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