Medvedev out for up to two months with injury

Russian tennis ace Daniil Medvedev has announced that he could face up to two months away from the court after playing through a small hernia.

The world tennis number two revealed the news on Twitter on Sunday afternoon and said that he and his team had “decided to have a small procedure to fix the problem”.

“I will likely be out for the next one to two months and will work hard to be back on [the] court soon,” the 26-year-old vowed, before thanking fans for their support.

Less than 20 minutes later, Medvedev posted a photo of himself laid up in a hospital bed with just his feet showing. “Recovering….but still watching,” he wrote with a crying-with-laughter smiley, in reference to a laptop on a chair showing a Premier League match.

“Can you guess who’s playing?” he asked his followers, before some then replied and correctly answered that he was enjoying Liverpool beating Watford 2-0 at Anfield in the Premier League.

Reigning US Open champion Medvedev became the sport’s number one player for the first time in his career after losing to Australian Open winner Rafael Nadal in the final in Melbourne earlier this year.

As Novak Djokovic returned to tennis, however, following a visa and vaccine scandal which saw him deported Down Under and unable to defend his Australian Open crown as Nadal then overtook Djokovic in all-time Grand Slam wins, Medvedev only stayed in the top ranking for three weeks. 

Following his quarter-final loss to Hubert Hurkacz at the Miami Open on Thursday which saw him miss out on the chance to return to the summit, Medvedev complained of suffering dizziness and fatigue which are common symptoms for those suffering from a hernia.

“All the match I was not feeling my best. But, you know, sometimes it happens,” Medvedev, who also said he was like a “fish on the sofa”, told reporters.

“I don’t know the actual reason. Maybe the heat. But I was feeling super, like, dizzy, tired, and there was this long game where I couldn’t serve anymore. Then in the locker room I was cramping quite [a lot], so physically [it] was not easy. But at the same time, that’s part of the game,” he conceded.

Medvedev’s knock ends hope of overtaking Djokovic again any time soon, but with Wimbledon on the horizon around the time he should return to action, figures such as British tennis legend Tim Henman tipped Medvedev to dethrone the Serb once more prior to his injury announcement. 

“In the context of that conversation, if Medvedev hadn’t already been number one, then it is a big issue. But the fact he’s already been there – and yes, he’d rather be one than two – means I don’t think it’s such a big issue for Medvedev,” Henman said on Amazon Prime.

“If you look at the ranking points coming up, because he played so poorly on clay last year, I think he will get back to one pretty rapidly, especially if Djokovic is only playing a curtailed schedule,” Henman stated, though Medvedev now faces a race against time to make the French Open on May 22 and try and improve on a career-best quarter-finals appearance in 2021.

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