Daniil Medvedev takes down Novak Djokovic to win the 2021 US Open

Daniil Medvedev spoiled what could have been a historic day for Novak Djokovic to win his maiden Grand Slam at the 2021 US Open 6-4 6-4 6-4.

The Russian famously said ahead of the match that he did not care about the history and he played that. The moment was not too big for Medvedev who played a perfect match from start to finish. His serving was tremendous, his play was great and Djokovic found himself in the misery of not knowing what to do which is something he usually does to his opponents.

The story of the match were missed chances by Djokovic and it was something that cost him throughout the match. At the start, he was up 40-15 in his first service game but a couple of misses gave them the game away. Djokovic was quite tight at the start missing some easy shots but Medvedev did not care. He served incredibly well and Djokovic had no answer.

At the start of the 2nd set, Djokovic had a small resurgence fighting his way to 40-0 on Medvedev's serve but once again he failed to use it. He never quite recovered after that and the errors continued piling up. Medvedev took a break midway through the set and once again with his tremendous serving he was able to hold onto it quite easily.

And the 3rd set once again featured a missed chance by Djokovic. He was up 30-0 in the first game but once again practically gave it away with mistakes. He was not aided by the fact that his 1st serve completely abandoned him from the 2nd set on and that proved difficult to overcome. Medvedev played a great match and won it deservedly but Djokovic showed he is only human playing a match well above his usual level.

It was probably his worst match in quite a while including the ones he played at the Olympics and Medvedev used his patience waiting for mistakes and counter-attacking shorter balls. Djokovic tried to be more aggressive in order to break through Medvedev but he was not good enough. He hit 54 % of his 1st serves, he hit 27 winners to 38 errors, converting one of the 6 break points he had. To counter that, Medvedev hit 16 aces, hit 38 winners to 31 errors converting 4 out of 8 break points.

Congratulations to Daniil Medvedev!