The sport of tennis is set for a defining season in 2020. With the top three players in the world over the past 15 years – Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer – entering the twilight of their careers, new players have emerged as genuine threats to their supremacy.

In this 8-part series, we’ll assess each player in the top eight and what they can achieve in 2020. We’ll look at how their positions are under threat and what they can do to attain their goals in the season to come. It’s never easy to look forward, but with our 2020 vision, you’ll have the benefit of hindsight when you’re talking tennis during the next 12 months.

We continue our series with a look at a player who has exploded onto the circuit in 2019, Russian tennis sensation, Daniil Medvedev. Having risen to his highest ever ATP ranking of 4th in the world in September 2019, Medvedev ended the season 5th in the chart. He did, however, reach an incredible six consecutive tournament finals in a row, including the 2019 U.S. Open final, which he lost in five thrilling sets to world number one, Rafael Nadal.

Medvedev, who at 6’ 6” actually plays as more of a baseliner than he does a serve-volley merchant, is a player of fierce power and devastating groundstrokes. The Russian provokes mixed opinion from his peers, however, with Novak Djokovic calling him a ‘complete player’ and Alexander Zverev commenting that his rival was the best player in the world at one point during 2019, but Greek ATP Final winner Stefanos Tsitsipas decrying the Russian as ‘very boring’.