Daniil Medvedev is not a fan of small court and he had a major complaint in Madrid when he was playing against compatriot Aslan Karatsev, a match he lost.
Medvedev likes to stand behind the baseline to return the ball and when the court has a smaller dimension it doesn't allow him to stand as far behind as he wants to. That was an issue during a recent clash with Karatsev with Medvedev complaining that he had a disadvantage due to not playing on the main court:
"Why do I have this disadvantage when I am No 2 [seed]? I don't understand. It's a little bit strange, right?"
He further expanded on that ahead of the
Rome Open:
"From one point of view I understand probably all the tournaments in the world cannot make all the match courts as big as I want or some other players want. At the same time it's a disadvantage. Playing Karatsev on the second court, I had a disadvantage. Didn't allow me to play my 100% tennis, even if I was probably at 98%. That's disappointing because it was same, practice courts are always smaller," he added. "On his serve I didn't have many opportunities, and that was really disappointing."
He then stated his preference for a tennis court:
"Yeah, I would love every tennis court to be 10 meters large and 10 meters wide, but I also understand it's not possible. Every time I'm not going to have my space on the return, I'm going to be disappointed because I cannot play my best tennis."