There was not enough fuel in the engine. After a big bout of fatigue already during his first round on Tuesday, Gaël Monfils was not able to maintain the intensity necessary to really compete with Daniil Medvedev, Wednesday in the second round in Monte-Carlo. Despite a good passage in the second set, the Frenchman logically lost in two sets (6-2, 6-4) and 1h28 of play on the Rainier-III court against the world number 4. The latter will challenge his compatriot Karen Khachanov for a place in the quarter-finals.
He is no longer as allergic to clay as he was a few years ago. For his first match of the season on this surface, Daniil Medvedev quickly found his feet this Wednesday on the Rock. Too solid from the baseline for Gaël Monfils, convincing on his serve overall, the Russian mastered almost everything, even if he almost made life complicated by losing the thread at the start of the second act.
Medvedev lost his temper but quickly recovered
At 2-1 against him but 30/0 on his serve, he first became annoyed with the referee’s judgment on a mark. Medvedev, who considered the ball too long, had stopped the point and therefore lost it in stride. Then on the next point, furious at a new error from the linesman although quickly rectified, he lost the thread of the game a little. Result: he was broken while leading 40/15 (6-2, 1-3) and he needed two more good games to calm down. During the next change of sides, the world number 4 even took out his anger on the referee in an excessive manner, to say the least.
But once the storm under his head passed, Medvedev went back into “wall” mode and caught up quite easily. Physically limited, Monfils could not maintain the standoff from the baseline and made a series of placement errors. Despite a desire to move forward that was sometimes rewarded, the Frenchman did not have the necessary juice to serve well and play with aggression and precision. At 4-4, he let go once too often, before his rival ended with a quick shutout.
Too tired, he didn’t have the means to do better, but he had the merit of playing his luck bravely in the second set. Next week, he should take a well-deserved rest before trying to gain momentum for Roland-Garros. After all, the top seed isn’t that far away.