Daniil Medvedev brought out an underarm serve–an especially unusual move for him–during his Nitto ATP Finals round-robin defeat of Alexander Zverev on Monday night.
Serving at 4-3, 30-30 in the second set, the Russian caught Zverev in a return position well behind the baseline. The German scrambled to successfully retrieve the dink serve, but he was never in a good position thereafter and eventually butchered a backhand volley.
Medvedev held serve one point later for 5-3 and was well on his way to victory.
“I did it once on clay at Roland Garros,” the world No. 4 reflected, “because on clay it’s tougher to serve aces or something like this. Guys are far back. And it worked.
Here it was just in the moment. I saw him really far (back). I was thinking, ‘okay, where do I go?’ And I felt like, okay, at this moment I don’t see an obvious choice and I had the ball really close to my racquet. I’m, like, ‘he’s so far (back). He’s going to have trouble [returning] it. And he had trouble. He actually made a good shot to bring it back, but I managed to win the point–and that’s the most important (thing).”
“I think it was part of the tactic for him,” Zverev said. “I was quite far back. It paid off. What can I say? It worked well for him.”
Medvedev will go up against Novak Djokovic in the Group A winners’ match on Wednesday, while Zverev faces a borderline must-win meeting with Diego Schwartzman.
well done, Med