The 28th February 2022 marks the start of a new era in men’s tennis with Daniil Medvedev rising to the top of the world rankings for the first time in his career.
Medvedev has been closing in on the top spot in recent weeks and came agonizingly close at the Australian Open where he led Rafael Nadal in the final by two sets before losing. Instead, it was last week when he sealed his place as world No.1 after Novak Djokovic suffered a quarter-final loss at the Dubai Tennis Championships. At the same time Medvedev was playing at the Mexican Open where he lost in the semi-finals. He now leads the Serbian by 150 points.
“I saw that he was losing, but I didn’t know that if he loses I’m gonna become No. 1,” Medvedev said following Djokovic’s loss in Dubai. “I thought I have to do something big here. So then when I was receiving all the messages, I understood, okay, it’s gonna happen.”
The Russian’s rise has been coming for some time given his consistency on the Tour. He has won 13 titles so far in his career with four of those occurring last year, including his maiden Grand Slam trophy at the US Open. He has won 43 out of his last 50 matches played and reached the semi-finals or better at seven out of eight tournaments during that period. The only exception was Indian Wells where he lost in the fourth round to Grigor Dimitrov.
“Of course I am happy to reach No. 1. It was my goal since I was young and especially my goal in the latest times,” he told atptour.com. “I got a lot of messages from many people and from other tennis players and I just want to thank everybody for the big support.”
Medvedev has a total of 234 Tour wins under his belt with 29 of those being against top 10 opposition. To mark his rise to No.1, here are six things to know about the milestone:-
- Medvedev has become the 27th man in history to reach world No.1 since the ATP ranking system was introduced back in 1973. He is the third player from his country to reach the top after Yevgeny Kafelnikov (6 weeks at No. 1 in 1999) and Marat Safin (9 weeks at No. 1 in 2000 and 2001).
- He is the first player outside the Big Four to reach No.1 in 18 years. Prior to Medvedev, the last player outside of the quartet to reach the position was Andy Roddick during the first five months of 2004.
The Big Four had held the No.1 position for a staggering 6,601 days between them! - Medvedev is the first new No.1 on the men’s Tour since Andy Murray in 2016 when he conquered the rankings for the first time.
- At 198cm tall (6”6’) Medvedev is the tallest player in history to reach world No.1. To put his height into context, the Russian is the same height as rival Alexander Zverev but is 13cm shorter than world No.17 Reilly Opelka.
- At the age of 26, he is the sixth oldest player to reach world No.1. The oldest to do so is John Newcome who achieved the milestone at the age of 30.
- Medvedev’s journey to the top has been steady progress. He cracked the top 100 in November 2016 and then the top 50 in July 2017. A year later he broke into the top 20 and then the top 10 in 2019.
