‘When he came back from Australia, he had no more confidence’: how Medvedev bounced back

Three consecutive titles, 14 victories in a row including one over the scarecrow of this start to the season Novak Djokovic: no doubt, Daniil Medvedev is back in business. And yet, it was far from over. Eliminated in the third round of the first Grand Slam of the year, the Russian was brooding in early February. “On his return from Australia, the two weeks of training are very complicated because he no longer has confidence. As he does not win, he does not feel well, he does not feel anything and it is necessary to manage that. You have the impression that there is no hook, that nothing holds, that everything can be a problem and you have to manage to find your way through it“, explains Gilles Cervara to our colleagues.

An explosive but promising argumentative game

So what levers did the player-coach couple pull to reverse the situation? In other words, what were the keys to the click? If there is obviously no miracle recipe, a kind of argumentative battle on the tennis level has been established between the two men. For Medvedev to change his attitude, become optimistic and positive again, his coach must somehow persuade him. A potentially explosive but promising strategy.

“The three days before Rotterdam are very special. Daniil doubts and everything is a source of explanation for why he plays tennis badly. I try to accompany, to react, to coach him as best as possible to show him that what he says is not reality. Because I think he plays well. It works rather. In training, each time I intervene, it has a positive effect. But the basis is that he tries to convince himself that he is not playing well. And I am convinced that he is playing well. I take it as a game: he tries to tell the reasons why he plays badly when I have to show him that everything is normal and that he plays well. Sometimes it’s tense but I intervene with this vision, to try to get it out of what it is moving towards“, details Cervara.

But all the credit does not go to the French coach. Because if Medvedev was so negative before his recovery in the Netherlands, it was as much the consequence of his disappointing results as a quest for solutions that does not say its name. In short, a conscious or unconscious provocation to change a blocked situation. Ever since his traumatic loss in the Australian Open 2022 final, the Russian had been hoping to find the spark again. He may have finally made it that way.

“When he complains and looks for excuses, he mostly looks for a way to get thereobserve ainsi Cervara. I see training with Félix Auger-Aliassime two days before, we are on the central. And what is happening is unreal. He’s looking for all the reasons why he can’t win. And I’m next, like ice, I do not answer on purpose. I know he challenges me. And things are going up for me, my feelings are going up in order to be able to bring him, at the right moment, levers on which he could cling. Because I know, I know him, I feel that it goes inside him. I know he will eventually do something with it. He has this mind-blowing ability.”

It is also against Félix Auger-Aliassime, chance sometimes doing things well, that Medvedev validated in the quarter-finals in Rotterdam his first victory-reference on a Top 10 for more than a year. Even if the turning point had probably taken place in part from the 1st round during which he had knocked down Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. A match in which Cervara had insisted that he persevere, an instruction that the Russian had illustrated with a turnstile with his hands after each victory thereafter. A celebration in the form of a snowball effect.

Medvedev, the man of the series

Even if he obviously did not reveal everything in this interview, Cervara insisted, as often at the highest level, on the importance of the mental dimension, revealing to have proceeded in much the same way in the fall of 2020, before Medvedev’s double Bercy-Masters. The latter is undoubtedly a man of series and we remember the 6 consecutive finals in the summer-fall of 2019 which had made him enter the elite of world tennis. Will he be able to continue this one to Indian Wells and Miami?

Cervara hopes so. “Daniil talks about it like it’s something magical. So yes, the effect is magical, but the process of being confident, at this level of confidence, is a process that is built every day. When you reach that level of confidence, it has a multiplier effect. That’s also why I say it can go on for a long time.”