Medvedev pulls away from first-round US Open test

pReturning to the site where he won his maiden major trophy in 2021, a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/daniil-medvedev/mm58/overview'Daniil Medvedev/a took the first step in regaining form Tuesday after early losses in Montreal and Cincinnati. The fifth seed kickstarted his a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/us-open/560/overview'US Open/a title quest by defeating a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/dusan-lajovic/l987/overview'Dusan Lajovic/a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 6-1./p
p“Second set, [Dusan] played an amazing level. I don’t think you can play better than he did. I actually played quite good and lost the set,” said Medvedev, who left the court after the second set to change clothes.

“I was really tired at the end of the second set. And then I managed to put some extra pressure on him a little bit. I played aggressive, didn’t face a break point afterwards. Just played a tiny bit better.”/p[ATP APP]
p
After dropping the second set, a dialled-in Medvedev quickly rebounded by breaking the Serbian to love in his opening service game. Medvedev then was nearly untouched on serve, facing just one break point across the third and fourth sets./p
p
Holding the advantage in forehand-to-forehand rallies, the World No. 5rsquo;s brickwall consistency helped him win a lung-busting 32-shot rally to earn an early break in the fourth set. The 28-year-old also showed flashes of superb shotmaking, such as the opening set when he was nearly standing in the first row of the stands, yet ripped a return winner around the net while Lajovic attempted to rush forward./pblockquote class="twitter-tweet"p lang="en" dir="ltr"AROUND THE NET POST?! ????brbrWho else but a href="https://twitter.com/DaniilMedwed?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@DaniilMedwed/a ????a href="https://twitter.com/usopen?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@usopen/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/USOpen?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#USOpen/a a href="https://t.co/HoyJUgErLq"pic.twitter.com/HoyJUgErLq/a/pmdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1828539481500111222?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"August 27, 2024/a/blockquote script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script
pMedvedev advanced after two hours, 33 minutes, improving to 2-2 against Lajovic in their Lexus ATP Head2Head series. The 34-year-old had won their previous two meetings: 2019 Monte-Carlo and 2021 Rotterdam./ppThe 20-time tour-level titlist's first-round victory marked his 30th match win at Flushing Meadows. Last yearrsquo;s finalist will next meet a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/fabian-marozsan/m0ci/overview'Fabian Marozsan/a, who survived a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/hamad-medjedovic/m0jf/overview'Hamad Medjedovic/a 2-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4./pp“To be honest, every year it’s different, in a way better and better. First coming here, just trying to win one match. Now coming here, I’m like, ‘Okay, it’s the best place for me in the world to play! I love it here. My favourite tournament in the world,’” Medvedev said to the roar of the Louis Armstrong Stadium crowd./pp

“Honestly the only goal when I come here is to win. There are tough opponents, but the only goal is to win.”/pp[NEWSLETTER FORM]/p