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Daniil Medvedev is cautiously optimistic he can do well at the French Open, which he believes will not be “the same” without Rafa Nadal.
Nadal holds 14 Roland-Garros titles, a record, but the 37-year-old is yet to recover from injury and will miss out on a chance to make it 15.
He said: “I, for sure, maybe have more expectations than I usually have in Roland-Garros. But I also know that it’s tricky and you have to kind of you know, use this confidence, not get cocky if we can say because that’s where the danger is sometimes.
“You think, ‘Oh well, I played so well, now it’s going to be easy,’ then in the first round you have problems and you can get angry and maybe lose the match.
“So I have been in this situation many times and I just want to try to play good tennis here at Roland-Garros.”
Medvedev noted that tennis can be a solitary sport, but he will feel the absence of Nadal.
He continued: “Tennis has a short memory because you focus so much on yourself, on your tournament that you honestly don’t care who’s there in the locker room or not.
“Right now, everyone is crazy about their first round, when are we playing, against who, what time. But the tournament for sure is going to feel different. Every two days you could watch Rafa play on TV because they would show him for sure, he would play on centre court and this year it’s not going to be the same.”
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