The No. 1-ranked Russian didn’t drop a set all week, including against the defending champion in the final on Saturday.
Daniil Medvedev got his summer hard-court season off to a perfect start in Los Cabos on Saturday night, capturing the 14th ATP title of his career—and his first of the year—with a 7-5, 6-0 victory over Cam Norrie, the defending champion at the ATP 250 event.
The No. 1-ranked Russian had lost his last five ATP finals in a row coming into the Los Cabos final, but after a hard-fought first set, this one was a runaway.
After the two traded breaks in the fifth and sixth games of the match, Medvedev got a critical break in the seventh game for 4-3, and two games later brought up double set point serving for the set at 5-4, 40-15—Norrie, who won the first ATP title of his career in Los Cabos a year ago, made an inspired escape, winning the next four points in a row to break back for 5-all, but that might have been the British No. 1’s last stand.
From 5-all Medvedev steamrolled through the next eight games in a row, closing it out after an hour and 23 minutes with one last unreturnable serve out wide.
“When you play against Cam, you know you have to fight for every point,” Medvedev said in his on-court interview. “I didn’t even play badly in that game at 5-4, but I knew I had to stay there—I just managed to play well from there, and it was enough today.
“Every match here was very good, but the final is always special. In the final you always play the best player of the week. It was a high level match and I’m happy I managed to show some good tennis and some good shots in such an important match.”
After capturing his first Grand Slam title at the US Open last year, Medvedev lost his next five ATP finals in a row, at the Masters 1000 event in Paris and the season-ending ATP Finals last fall, and at the Australian Open, ’s-Hertogenbosch and Halle this year.
But the Russian snapped that streak in Los Cabos, just in time for one of his favorite stretches of the season—he’ll now head to back-to-back Masters 1000s in Canada and Cincinnati, then the US Open—he won Canada and the US Open last year.
Just by reaching the final in Los Cabos this week, Medvedev also guaranteed himself of keeping his No. 1 ranking until at least the end of the US Open.
He also becomes just the second reigning No. 1 to win an ATP title in Mexico, after Gustavo Kuerten, who won Acapulco in 2001—the only other reigning ATP No. 1 ever to play in Mexico was Jimmy Connors, who played Davis Cup there in 1975.
Source By – Tennis.com
