Italian Jannik Sinner defeated defending champion Daniil Medvedev 6-1, 6-2 in just 69 minutes on Friday to reach the final of the ATP Miami Open, where he will face Grigor Dimitrov. Bulgaria’s Dimitrov reached his third final of the Masters 1000 series after beating fourth-seeded Alexander Zverev 6-4, 6-7 (4/7), 6-4. Sinner will be the favorite against world number 12 Dimitrov after his display of power and skill at the Hard Rock Stadium swept away Medvedev. The Italian had lost to the Russian in the Miami final last year but recovered from two sets down to beat him in the Australian Open final in January.
There was no doubt about the outcome this time as Sinner utterly dominated from the start.
Sinner broke Medvedev’s first service game to take a 2-0 lead in the opening set, forcing the Russian into the corner at the end of a long rally before firing a winner past him.
While the 22-year-old looked fresh and enthusiastic, powerful from the baseline and inventive when he got to the net, Medvedev struggled to hold his serve and the Italian broke again in the fourth game, taking advantage of his fourth break point .
A rattled-looking Medvedev finally held on in the sixth game, but Sinner served with love to complete a first-set rout in just 33 minutes.
It was the same story in the second set, Sinner broke at love to start. The Russian looked dejected after going wide on a break point to fall 4-1 behind, one of a series of unusually poorly executed shots from the 28-year-old.
Sinner encountered little resistance on the way to serving for the match and acknowledged that his emphatic victory was aided by the off-kilter nature of his opponent’s play.
“I felt great on the court today. Usually the more you compete in a tournament, the more comfortable you feel and I am very happy with today’s performance,” he said.
“I don’t think Daniil felt that good today. He made a lot of mistakes that he normally doesn’t make, so I just took my chance. I expected a very tough match.”
Different player, different person
Sinner has won five straight matches against Medvedev after losing the first six encounters.
Sinner, who was on a run of 19 wins before losing to Carlos Alcaraz in the semi-finals at Indian Wells, said he has a very different proposition now than when he missed the Miami final last year.
“I’m a different player, a different person,” he said.
Medvedev was blunt in his assessment of his performance.
“He played well. I didn’t play well enough. We could talk for hours, but in the end I didn’t play well enough. He played well, he won easily. That’s the end of the story, honestly.” he said.
But he said Sinner had clearly accelerated his improvement over the past year.
“He misses less, he chooses his shots more wisely. He serves ten times better. You know, Jannik always served well, but now he serves very big.
“I’m actually wondering how he made it, because serving is not an easy opportunity to work on, and now he’s like, yeah, his serve is a big improvement for him”
The second semi-final was a much more exciting affair decided by a handful of key moments.
Dimitrov, who ousted world number two Carlos Alcaraz in the quarter-finals, broke when leading 5-4 in the first set. Zverev mistimed a return that got out of hand and handed the advantage to the Bulgarian.
The big-serving German was solid throughout the second set and while leading 6-2 in the tiebreak, he held on to win 7-4 and force a deciding set.
With Dimitrov always busy and going to the net regularly, Zverev relied on his basic play to get him through.
But it was broken in the seventh game when Dimitrov came to the net, slipped, but somehow managed an overhead volley while almost on the ground to win the break point.
The Bulgarian was buzzing with energy when he saw the set and said his makeshift winner had shown his mentality.
“I didn’t let any ball pass through me… I just thought: OK, I see the ball, I’m going to fight for it.
“It was a dogfight on both sides, we really went at each other after that first set,” he said.
(This story has not been edited by WhatsNew2Day staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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