ALMATY – Two titles and two semi-finals in his last four tournaments. No player heads into the end of the season in better form than Daniil Medvedev. He beat Georgia’s Nikoloz Basilashvili 6-7 (6-8), 6-1, 6-3 in the final of the Almaty Open to successfully defend the title he won in 2025.
“If I can keep playing at the level I’m playing right now, I’ll have my chances to beat basically any opponent, and that gives you the chance to win tournaments,” he said in Almaty.
Medvedev will land in Vienna after one of the best months of his career. He won the Hangzhou Open, reached the semi-finals of the China Open and the Shanghai Masters, and has now retained his title in Almaty.
His stop in Kazakhstan was in doubt after the physical toll of his run in China, but he said he was committed to the tournament. A week later, that decision has paid off: he has all but sealed his place at the ATP Finals in Turin.
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“You can always face someone who plays well. For example, Rafa played a great match against me in Shanghai. I won the match here, but Nikoloz played a great set against me. I managed to turn things around, but he was a set up. He could have won the second set and the match would have been over. So the goal is to play well, and that way I’ll have the chance to beat them and maybe get something there,” he said.
The world No. 5 now begins one of the most successful stretches of his season: he has already won titles in Vienna, Paris and at the ATP Finals, the three events he has left to play this year.
That makes him the big favourite for the European indoor swing alongside Alexander Zverev, as Jannik Sinner (the defending champion at the last two Finals) will not play again until 2027 due to injury, and Carlos Alcaraz has won only one indoor title (Rotterdam) in his career. The German, like the Russian, has an impressive record on the European indoor circuit. He has eight titles on the surface, including the ATP Finals in 2018 and 2021, as well as the Paris Masters in 2024.
For Medvedev, his week in Almaty marks not only his fourth title of the year but also the first time he has successfully defended a title he won the previous season.
“Today it’s a double feeling because, on the one hand, a title is always a title, whether you’re defending it or not, whether it’s in a new city or not, because it’s simply a great feeling. But it is very nice, because it had never happened to me before. It’s not, let’s say, a record that will last forever, but it’s the first time for me, and that’s always nice. And Almaty is a beautiful city, with great fans and a great tournament, so it’s the perfect place, so to speak, to defend a title for the first time,” he said.
