No. 3 seed Daniil Medvedev defeats Flavio Cobolli to progress to China Open semifinals

No. 3 seed Daniil Medvedev defeated Italian Flavio Cobolli 6-2, 6-4 to advance to the semifinals of the China Open. This is only the third time in tournament history after 2017 and 2019 that the top three-seeded men have made it into the semifinals at the China Open.

The match score doesn’t tell the full story though, as Medvedev faced 11 break points in the match. In a characteristically resilient performance, Medvedev saved 10 of them and rebounded quickly after his serve was broken in the second set.

Unlike Medvedev’s previous opponents, Cobolli sought to define the pace of rallies from the beginning of the match, attempting to hit winners by Medvedev at every opportunity. Medvedev responded in kind, hitting balls more powerfully than he had against his previous opponents in the tournament.

“If you give him easy balls, he likes to control the game,” said Medvedev. “So the goal was to try to aggress him a little bit.”

With the crowd on his side, Medvedev dominated throughout the first set, breaking Cobolli’s serve twice and excelling at the net. Medvedev played at his own rhythm, wearing the Italian down and pressuring him to make mistakes. An emotional Cobolli threw his racquet down twice in frustration after losing key points to such errors.

The second set started badly for Cobolli, who double-faulted to hand Medvedev the first game. Although the Italian broke Medvedev’s serve and then held his own, Cobolli’s form crumbled in the fourth and fifth games. He failed to win a single point during either as he hit ball after ball into the net.

Despite this setback, Cobolli seemed to get a second wind. Across the next few games, Cobolli saved four break points to narrowly hold his serve twice, drawing energy from the cheering crowd as they shifted their allegiance away from Medvedev. The momentum seemed to be on Cobolli’s side as the second set went to a 10th game, in which the Italian handily won the first two points. Cobolli seemed poised to take a third point as he lobbed a ball high over Medvedev, who was at the net.

“At the moment he touched it, I thought, ‘Oh, he got me,’” said Medvedev in his post-match press conference.

Medvedev chased it down anyway. He barely managed to reach it and hit it back over his left shoulder. “Then you pray,” Medvedev said. “I was like, maybe it’s going in.”

The ball dropped on the line, and the rally continued. In possibly the most pivotal point of the match, Cobolli then hit the ball out-of-bounds.

“Unbelievable shot, unbelievably lucky,” he said. “Probably one of the best shots of my life.”

Having stolen Cobolli’s momentum, Medvedev won four more points to take the game, set, and match.

Medvedev finished runner-up to Jannik Sinner in last year’s China Open. To return to the final, he must first get through No. 2 seed Carlos Alcaraz in a rematch of their Wimbledon semi-finals showdown earlier this year. Alcaraz leads Medvedev 3-1 on hard courts and 5-2 overall.

—Reporting by Jared Rubenstein