The match that showed Daniil Medvedev's coach that his player was ready to make a deep run at a major wasn't in Washington, Montreal or Cincinnati, when the 23-year-old Russian reached back-to-back-to-back finals and won his first ATP Masters 1000 title, before heading to Flushing Meadows.
What told Gilles Cervara that Medvedev, the world No. 5 player he has worked with for the past five years, was ready for a major final was a disappointing five-set loss that made the coach smash his iPhone 5S.
Medvedev was facing Belgian veteran David Goffin, a former world No. 7 and two-time major quarterfinalist, in the third round of Wimbledon in July. Medvedev, seeded No. 11 and favored to make a run on the grass, had beaten Goffin in straight sets at the Australian Open in January.
He took a two-sets-to-one lead, but Goffin came back to advance, 4-6, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, 7-5. Cervara was so displeased he hurled his phone into a fence.
"It was very difficult to accept to lose very close like this. Because we knew that it could be a good opportunity to go further in the tournament. But he didn't," Cervara told USOpen.org.
But the coach, like his player on-court at times, calmed down after his moment of rage and got to work. After Wimbledon, they endured a 10-day training block modeled after a Grand Slam schedule, and Cervara insisted his player fight through mental fatigue and physical aches. Now Medvedev has reached his fourth consecutive final and his first major title match, where he'll face three-time champion Rafael Nadal in Arthur Ashe Stadium.
"When I see him doing like he does in Grand Slam or he did this summer, I'm not surprised," Cervara said, "because we work exactly like [this so] he could face this kind of situation [in a] Grand Slam."
Only twice in the past 51 years of the Open era has a player reached those four finals—Washington, Canada, Cincinnati, US Open—like Medvedev: Ivan Lendl, in 1982, and Andre Agassi, in 1995. The Russian's run—20-2 in the past 38 days—also reminds one of Andy Roddick's 2003 tear, when the 21-year-old American reached the semifinal in Washington and won titles in Montreal, Cincinnati and the US Open.
"This summer's been, I should say, so fast and long at the same time. Long because I've played so many matches. At the same time, so fast because, as you say, I didn't have any moment to just sit down and look back and say, 'Okay, I've done amazing things,'" Medvedev said. "There is something strong that makes me win these crazy sets and crazy matches, which maybe two months ago I would have lost."
The training for that 'something' took place in Cannes, France, where Medvedev practices at Cervara's Elite Tennis Center, far from the Russian's new favorite country—"I love U-S-A!" he said, after his semifinal win.
The coach, once he calmed down after the Wimbledon loss, realized he was encouraged by how Medvedev stayed with the more-experienced Goffin and remained composed throughout the three-hour, 31-minute match. "The connection with the mental, with the maturity," he said.
Cervara designed their training schedule like one Medvedev would experience in New York: four hours one day, one hour the next, four hours one day, one hour the next, like his playing schedule at a major, where players compete one day and have a light practice the next.
During their training, after an hour or two on court, Medvedev often would grow frustrated—similar to how he claps at his coach or gives him a sarcastic thumbs up during matches. But Cervara insisted that Medvedev stay in the moment and build on the Wimbledon loss.
"My job was to make him understand this is the perfect time to work on what we saw during this kind of match, and it's now that you work on this, not when you feel good or everything, it's just right now," Cervara said. "Maybe it will be for five minutes, maybe 10, maybe 15, so we have to use this one."
Medvedev persisted, practicing for another two, three hours, and foreshadowed what was to come during this North American summer.
The Russian has accumulated his aches during the past two weeks. He wears kinesthetic tape on his right arm and left quad, and has had to manage his energy at certain moments in New York. "Some games I have to not run to relax my leg," he said, after his quarterfinal win against Stan Wawrinka.
His outbursts with the crowd have been well-documented as well, and he's barked at Cervara. (By now, his coach knows better than to pay any attention to those remarks. "I don't even look at him when he does this," Cervara said.)
But Medvedev has worked through it all, as Cervara saw him do during their training block, to reach his first major final, where he'll face Nadal for the second time in the past month.
"He's just a machine, a beast on the court. The energy he's showing is just amazing," Medvedev said of Nadal. "To play him in your first Grand Slam final should be, I want to say, a funny thing. It's not going to be a funny thing, but it's going to be an amazing thing to live."
Medvedev won only three games—6-3, 6-0—when the pair played for the first time in the Montreal final. Cervara expects to see more improvement in Sunday's final, the type that Medvedev has been showing almost daily during his best stretch yet.
"My wish," Cervara said, "is to go out on the court after the final and whatever the result, it's to feel that this match makes him improve, makes him stronger, that's the main thing, I mean, the main thing after the win."
