Achi news desk-
Italy’s Jannik Sinner destroyed defending champion Daniil Medvedev 6-1, 6-2 in just 69 minutes on Friday to reach the ATP Miami Open final, where he will face Grigor Dimitrov.
Bulgaria’s Dimitrov reached his third Masters 1000 series final after he beat fourth seed Alexander Zverev 6-4, 6-7 (4/7), 6-4.
The victory means that Dimitrov will return to the top ten in the ATP rankings for the first time since 2018, his 260-week stay is the third longest in the history of the rankings.
Sinner will be the favorite against Dimitrov though, after his display of power and skill at the Hard Rock Stadium swept Medvedev away.
The Italian had lost to the Russian in the Miami final last year but managed to beat him in two sets in the Australian Open final in January.
There was no doubt about the result this time as Sinner completely dominated from the start.
Sinner broke Medvedev’s first service game to go 2-0 up in the opening set, pinning the Russian in the corner at the end of a long rally before blasting the winner past him.
While the 22-year-old looked fresh and fired up, exploding with power from the baseline and inventiveness when coming to the net, Medvedev struggled to hold his serve and the Italian broke again in the fourth game, taking advantage of his serve. fourth break point.
A shocked Medvedev finally caught up in the sixth game, but Sinner was delighted to complete a first set run in just 33 minutes.
It was the same story in the second set, Pechadur breaks to love at first. The Russian looked dejected after he went wide on break point to go down 4-1, one of a series of unusually poor shots from the 28-year-old.
Sinner met very little opposition on his way to serving for the match and admitted that his decisive victory was helped by the erratic nature of his opponent’s play.
“I felt great on the court today. Usually the further you go in a tournament, the more comfortable you feel and I’m very happy with today’s performance,” he said.
“I think Daniil didn’t feel this good today. He made a lot of mistakes that he doesn’t usually make, so I took the chance. I expected a very difficult game.”
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Different player, different person
Sinner has won five straight games against Medvedev after losing their first six games.
Sinner, who enjoyed a 19-game winning streak before losing to Carlos Alcaraz in the semi-finals at Indian Wells, said he is now a very different proposition than when he failed in the Miami final last year.
“I’m a different player, a different person,” he said.
Medvedev was blunt in his assessment of his performance.
“He played well. I didn’t play well enough. We could talk for hours but in the end I didn’t play well enough, he played well, he won easily. That’s the end of the story, really,” he said.
The second semi-final was a much tighter affair which was decided by a handful of key moments.
Dimitrov, who defeated number two Carlos Alcaraz in the quarter-finals, broke when 5-4 up in the first set, Zverev mistimed a return that went out of the court to give the advantage to the Bulgarians.
The big serving German was solid throughout the second set and as he was swinging from 6-2 in the tie he held on to win 7-4 and force a deciding set.
With Dimitrov always busy, often going to the net, Zverev relied on his baseline play to get him through.
But he was broken in the seventh game when Dimitrov came to the net, slipped but somehow controlled an overhead volley while almost on the floor to take the break point.
The Bulgarian was buzzing with energy as he saw the set and said his impromptu winner showed his mentality.
“I wasn’t letting any balls go through me… I thought, ok, I see the ball, I’m going to scramble for it.
“It was a dog fight at both ends, we went together after that first set,” he said.
Before defeating Alcaraz and Zverev, Dimitrov had also taken care of another top-10 opponent in Hubert Hurkacz and said the run showed he had found the consistency that has sometimes eluded him.
“What’s best above all is that I was able to put those games back to back. The consistency of beating the best players, for me, is a success much more than anything else,” he said.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – AFP)
