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Did Competition Load Help Make Medvedev a Grand Slam Champion?

Did Competition Load Help Make Medvedev a Grand Slam Champion?

Daniil Medvedev may not have gotten the result he wanted at his latest Major opportunity in Melbourne. But that doesn’t change the fact that he remains the most successful male player of his generation and the only non-Big-Four player among the current ATP top 10 to have a Grand Slam title. In this post, I look at the extent to which competition load played a role in getting Medvedev to what has so far been the milestone of his tennis career.

Does greater competition load going into the second week of a Grand Slam hurt a player's win chances?

Does greater competition load going into the second week of a Grand Slam hurt a player's win chances?

By the time of the Australian Open quarterfinals, Dominic Thiem had already played 10 hours and 23 minutes putting him in the top 20% of match time played to get to the quarters among men competing in Grand Slams in the past decade. And he only got further in the tail of total competition load as the event progressed. In this post, I look at whether the intensity of Thiem’s journey likely made his prospects for the title even more difficult.