The quarterfinals of the Indian Wells 2024 are done, and in the final one, Daniil Medvedev scored a victory over his Danish opponent Holger Rune. Medvedev won the match 7-5, 6-4, but he didn’t look very happy despite the outcome. He was, actually, upset over Rune, due to his action during the match, for which Rune didn’t apologize.
After the match, when Medvedev was asked a different question, that included Rune, Jannik Sinner, and Carlos Alcaraz, he very slyly, excluded Rune from the same bracket as the other two players. This was Medvedev’s way of dissing Rune even further, for what he just did on the court.
A reporter simply said that somewhere down in the future, there will be 3 young players from the current lot who will dominate the game. They are Sinner, Alcaraz, and also included was Rune. When the reporter asked Medvedev, among the three, who he sees as the future, the 2021 US Open winner simply probed, if they were talking about ‘Grand Slams’, or ‘Masters 1000’ or ‘World No. 1’ or something else. When it was clear that it was Grand Slams, the reporter meant, here’s what Medvedev had to say about it.
“Slams, yeah, that’s what I thought. Oh, tough. Bold guess. At the moment you want to say Sinner, right? But Carlos is super strong also. You know what, let’s put it this way, Carlos and Sinner with same number of slams in ten years. Then at the end of their career, I don’t know,” said Medvedev.
Medvedev completely omitted Rune from his answer and went on to talk about Alcaraz and Sinner. That was his way of getting back at Rune for not apologizing during the match. He didn’t consider him worthy enough to be in the same group as Alcaraz and Sinner. He also said that despite Sinner looking invincible, Alcaraz too is right up there. And that in 10 years, both of them will have the same number of Grand Slams. Medvedev said it, while he smiled.
After Medvedev won the first set 7-5, Rune was raring to go at him again. The second set started in exactly that aggressive fashion when Rune hit a ball on Medvedev’s body. Basically, after Rune served, the match point went on for a bit, before Medvedev charged forward to hit one hard at Rune to score the point. However, Rune hit the ball back directly to Medvedev’s body, which the Russian player somehow fended.
The commentator on air said, “Oh ho!! Bit of spice to start the second set.”
Medvedev wasn’t happy about the fact that Rune hit a body shot deliberately and didn’t apologize for it. Medvedev even asked for an apology from Rune, but the Dane just raised his hand very reluctantly. He was extremely unbothered by it and was in no mood to make it into a thing to apologize for.
Rune then urged him to not talk about this any further. But Medvedev wasn’t happy.
Holger Rune’s behavior against Daniil Medvedev left fans fuming also
Fans were mainly in support of Medvedev in this case. Unlike the Djokovic ‘Hindrance’ case, there were no two minds among fans about Holger Rune being wrong. From supporting Medvedev to trolling Rune’s career, here’s what some of the fans had to say about this:
Daniil Medvedev will play next against Tommy Paul in the semi-final. The winner will meet either Alcaraz or Sinner in the final of this year’s Indian Wells.
