“Not again” – How Daniil Medvedev finally conquered his five-set demons

In the high-stakes theater of the Australian Open, the scoreboard can be a cruel narrator. For Daniil Medvedev, standing on the blue hardcourts of Melbourne Park, the digits “0-2” in sets have often felt less like a deficit and more like a haunting.

It is a scoreline that triggers a specific, visceral memory of matches that slipped through his fingers — marathons where he did the hard work of climbing back, only to stumble at the final peak.

But during his third-round victory at the 2026 Australian Open, Medvedev decided he was done with the recurring nightmare.

The match was a grueling exercise in attrition, a classic Medvedev “brutal” encounter that pushed both players to the edge of physical collapse.

When you are two sets to love down, the path back is a long, lonely road. Yet, for the former champion, the struggle wasn’t just against the opponent across the net; it was against the persistent internal monologue shaped by a difficult 2025 season.

“It’s for sure very tough,” Medvedev admitted when reflecting on the mental weight of his recent history. “I always also know that of course like what happens in the past it like has a memory so it’s not easy sometimes to put it away.”

That memory is a heavy one. Last year, Medvedev found himself in the driver’s seat of multiple five-set comebacks, only to see the finish line vanish.

He dominated fourth sets with physical authority, but the fifth sets became a graveyard of missed opportunities. “That’s what happened last year many many times,” he recalled. “I lost all the matches having a breakup coming back from two sets to love down.”

As the fifth set against his third-round opponent intensified, the ghosts began to stir. Medvedev had fought his way back into the match, finding his rhythm and utilizing his trademark defensive wall to frustrate his foe.

But at 4-2 in the deciding set, with the finish line in sight, the script threatened to flip. At 40-15 on his own serve, his opponent unleashed a desperate, 170 km/h return that screamed across the court. Suddenly, the break was gone. The score was 4-3. The momentum was shifting.

In that moment, the internal alarm bells went off. “I’m like, ‘not again,'” Medvedev confessed.

It was a moment of pure vulnerability. For many players, that “not again” feeling is the beginning of the end—a self-fulfilling prophecy where the fear of losing outweighs the will to win.

But the 2026 version of Medvedev has developed a harder shell. Instead of spiraling into the frustrations of the past, he narrowed his focus until the world consisted of nothing but the next yellow ball.

“The only thing I could do is fight for the next game,” he said. “I managed to do it and then pretty confident game on my serve.”

Even when a lucky let-cord went against him in the final games, sparking another flash of “not again” anxiety, he stayed the course. He refused to let the “memory” of last year’s failures dictate the reality of today’s performance. By the time he struck the final winner, the relief was palpable. He hadn’t just won a tennis match; he had exorcised a demon that had been following him for twelve months.

“I’m happy that I managed to stay strong, not let this get into my head and finish the match,” Medvedev said, his voice carrying the exhaustion and satisfaction of a man who had survived a trial by fire. “Because again, what happened in the past doesn’t matter. What happens today is the most important.”

This victory marks a significant pivot point in Medvedev’s quest for another Grand Slam title.

In the best-of-five format, the mental game is often more taxing than the physical one. While some of his peers find the longer format “relaxing” because it provides more “rope” to catch yourself after a mistake, Medvedev views it through a more clinical lens.

“I am pretty tense when I play my matches,” he noted. “Tense doesn’t mean tight but like… all my rallies are long. I would not say it’s relaxing for me to play five set matches.”