French Open: "Where's the Amazon money?" - Daniil Medvedev arranges a memorable press conference
Daniil Medvedev had to admit defeat to Stefanos Tsitsipas in a high-class match in the quarter-finals of the French Open - but even after the game, the world number two still provided one or the other highlight.
by Nikolaus Fink
last edit: Jun 09, 2021, 09:49 am
The night sessions of this year's French Open were - to put it carefully - only moderately popular. Due to the exit restrictions in France, fans had to stay away from the last match of the day on the Court Philippe-Chatrier up to and including June 8th, which led, among other things, to Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams urgently recommending tournament director Guy Forget after their nightly performances, in future only to be set on the day.
While the 56-year-old complied with this request from the two superstars, Daniil Medvedev probably had a less powerful say than his two colleagues when creating the game plan. Because his quarter-final game against Stefanos Tsitsipas was placed in the night session, contrary to the wishes of the Russian.
Medvedev dissatisfied with the appointment
And so the world number two spoke after his three-set defeat not only about his unexpectedly strong performance in Paris, but also about what he saw as an extremely questionable start: "Our game was definitely the 'Match of the Day'. So Roland Garros has Amazon over the Preferred over people. It's that simple. "
But what did the reigning ATP Finals champion mean? For the first time in the history of the tournament, Amazon had secured the exclusive rights to the ten night-session encounters and broadcast the match of the day - on this Tuesday Medvedev against Tsitsipas.
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Basically it is good to have sponsors and the like, but the players would not have benefited from it this year, so Medvedev: "This year we have more people in Roland Garros, we have Amazon - I don't know if that was last It was the same year - and we get 15 percent less prize money. The question is: where is the money from Amazon? ".
Medvedev fails with a serve from below
Even before that, the 25-year-old had caused a stir time and again on the pitch: spectacular punches, discussions with the referee and, last but not least, a service from below at match point, which Tsitsipas easily achieved and exemplified on the Russian - it got boring the fans in front of the TV sets certainly not.
When asked about the last serve, Medvedev said: "During the entire match I thought about the fact that I could play him on an important point. In my opinion he was very far behind, so it can always work. (...) But it didn't work at all. "
Here the single tableau in Roland Garros
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