Daniil Medvedev has been one of the best players in the world in the past few years. He’ll never be someone whose game players model their game after as it’s quite quirky, but it works, or rather, it used to work really well.
Medvedev started his rise six years ago in 2019. It was July when he entered the top 10 at age 23. Since then, he’s been part of the top 10 almost continuously, even becoming world No 1 briefly in 2022.
These days, Medvedev is No 7 in the world, which is the lowest he has been ranked since 2023. It’s not a massive drop, but it’s indicative of a trend.
Dropping Out of the Top Five
Medvedev is out of the top five for the first time in two years. The reason why it has happened is because his performances haven’t been very good lately. The Russian has lost his consistency, and as a result, lost some of the points that he earned last year, most notably from playing the Australian Open final last year.
Dropping out of the top five isn’t a massive problem for Medvedev right now, but it does show that his level has been trending downward for a while. Let’s compare some of his seasons. He won 62 matches in 2019. He won 28 in the pandemic season. He won only 47 in 2022, which was a down year for him in terms of level, but he bounced back in 2023, winning 62 matches.
He again won only 46 matches last year, so it was a down year again, and much like in 2022, he dropped out of the top five again. It simply indicates that if he plays a bit worse than average, he’s out of there.
What he was able to do after that first down year was bounce back, and he’s not been able to do that so far in 2025. It’s still early, but the Australian Open looked very problematic as he really didn’t play well.
Can Medvedev Get Back to the Top Five?
Some have started to speculate that this might be the end for Medvedev. He is going to be 29 this year, and there is some interesting data pointing towards a possible demise. Quite a few excellent players started to drop off at that precise age.
Some players who dropped out of the top 10 at 29 include Andy Roddick, Kei Nishikori, Marin Cilic, and Nikolay Davydenko. Players who started to struggle at 30 include Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Andy Murray, Juan Martin Del Potro, and Tomas Berdych.
Basically, there is a trend here, though most of these on this list had massive problems with injuries. Medvedev has never been the most injury-prone player and rarely dealt with an injury, but it might be something to do with wear and tear. Medvedev’s playstyle creates quite a bit of that.
Can he come back? The right answer to this is yes because he doesn’t have that baggage with injuries. If he was an injury-prone player who was starting to decline and entering his thirties, there would be plenty of reason to be skeptical about that.
With his clean injury record, Medvedev can come back to the top, but he will need to adapt to the real problem which is causing it.
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What’s Wrong With Medvedev?
The main reason why Medvedev is dropping in the rankings is the playstyle of the players coming up. Although, he might argue that it has all to do with the quality of tennis balls since the pandemic. Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz give Medvedev a lot of problems, and he needs to be basically perfect to beat them. The reason is the way they play.
They are aggressive baseliners who have the perfect game to counter his defensive play. His affinity to stand far behind the line and get the ball back works well in principle against most playstyles, but if the player is capable of hitting him off the court, then it’s a problem.
The young generations coming through are playing even more aggressive tennis than Sinner and Alcaraz. It’s a result of a shift in philosophy when it comes to both men’s and women’s tennis. Most players coming through now are hyper-aggressive baseliners who are capable of hitting anything.
That is how he lost against Learner Tien at the Australian Open. The American just out-hit him, and this problem won’t go away unless he adapts his style of play. See the video below. If he doesn’t, there is a risk of him simply getting overwhelmed, much like his colleague Stefanos Tsitsipas has been.
The demise of Daniil Medvedev isn’t so much a demise as much as it’s a product of times changing. He’s slowly but surely waltzing away from his peak years, and he will get overtaken by younger and better players.
His playstyle being somewhat of a relic in these times doesn’t help. But if Medvedev changes it slightly and works a bit harder, he still has what it takes to be at the top of tennis in the coming years.
