Stefanos Tsitsipas identifies the mental change he must make to conquer arch rival Medvedev
Stefanos Tsitsipas lost for a fifth time in a row to Russian star Daniil Medvedev at the Shanghai Masters and now says he must change a key aspect of his on court thought process if he’s to overcome the dominance of the world No.4 in their personal rivalry
Stefanos Tsitsipas says that he should stop concentrating on the technical side of his game during a match and focus on the game if he’s to have a chance of beating Daniil Medvedev over the next few years.
Tsitsipas had just lost in the semi final in Shanghai 7-6, 7-5 and was speaking in his post match press conference when he was asked what he thought he should do differently seeing as he’d never managed to beat Medvedev?
Tsitsipas said, “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to beat him the next time or the time after that one, but I know there’s going to be a time where I’m going to find opportunities and beat him. I don’t know when it’s going to come. Probably two, three, four, five, six years’ time, I don’t know, but it’s going to come at some point. The chance of opportunity will be somewhere there. As you saw today, it was very close in tiebreak.
“Yeah, my mind was not — like, it was 5-All, I missed a stupid forehand. I would also say that some technical things that I have been changing recently, so that was mostly related to that. The forehand mistake, which I’m not used to miss.
“So I should concentrate less on the technical side and leave that on the side during the match and be aware more of what’s in front of me and not think technically too much.”
Tsitsipas is taking a week off and will most likely play next at the Paris Indoors event starting on the 28th October. Medvedev had entered his home country tournament the Kremlin Cup in Moscow but decided to withdraw as he needed more rest after his exertions in winning the Masters 1000 title in shanghai just 2 days earlier
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