Stat of the Day: Daniil Medvedev records 40th Top 10 win of career with victory over Rublev

Daniil Medvedev made a winning start to his ATP Finals campaign on Monday night, taking out countryman Andrey Rublev, 6-4, 6-2, in his first round-robin match of the tournament.

And with the victory, Medvedev hit a pair of milestones.

First of all, it was his 65th win of the year. He’s the first man to hit 65 wins in 2023, and just the second player overall—male or female—after Iga Swiatek, who posted 68 wins this year.

Second of all, it was the milestone 40th Top 10 win of his career.

Since ATP rankings began over 50 years ago in August 1973, Medvedev is just the 41st man to record 40 career Top 10 wins, and the seventh active men’s player to have that many.

He’s also just the second man born in 1990 or later to reach 40 career Top 10 wins, after Alexander Zverev. Kei Nishikori was three days from making that list—he was born on December 29th, 1989.

ACTIVE MEN’S PLAYERS WITH 40+ TOP 10 WINS:
254: Novak Djokovic
186: Rafael Nadal
105: Andy Murray
62: Stan Wawrinka
45: Alexander Zverev [born in 1997]
40: Kei Nishikori
40: Daniil Medvedev [born in 1996]

Medvedev had lost a 6-7 (7), 6-3, 7-6 (7) epic to Rublev in the round-robin stage of the ATP Finals last year, but he hadn’t lost a set to his countryman this year with straight-set wins in Dubai (6-2, 6-2) and the US Open (6-4, 6-3, 6-4), and that pattern continued in their ATP Finals rematch on Monday night.

The first set could have gone either way—Medvedev got the only break of the set in the seventh game, but Rublev had seven break chances throughout the opening set, missing out on all of them.

Once Medvedev had the first set in his pocket the floodgates opened and he stormed out to a 5-1, double-break lead, eventually serving it out at love two games later.

Medvedev finished the match with three times as many winners as unforced errors, 24 to 8, and more than six times as many winners as unforced errors on his forehand, 13 to 2.

He’s now 3-0 against Rublev this year, and 7-2 overall.