Daniil Medvedev yet again finds himself in the thick of all actions! Medvedev was looking to redeem himself against Ben Shelton after losing out the first match to Frances Tiafoe. He couldn’t win the match against Shelton, but the Russian did manage a narrow escape from a possible default at the Laver Cup on Day 3. During a recent episode of the Tennis Channel Live Podcast, Andy Roddick emphasized the downside of tennis rules as he compared Medvedev’s racquet throw incident to that of Novak Djokovic’s default at the 2020 US Open. 

The incident took place during the first-set tie-break when he handed Ben Shelton two set points. Daniil Medvedev was so frustrated with his shot that he threw his racquet on the ground and then the racquet bounced off the court and ended up in the stands. Thankfully for him, it didn’t hit anyone in the crowd and he was let off with a code violation warning. Frances Tiafoe was seen having an argument with the officials and then the umpire clarified him by saying, “Frances, it bounced and it didn’t hit anyone. The result was not bad. If it had hit someone, I’d agree with you.“

According to former ATP pro, Andy Roddick, “This is another one of those rules in tennis where you look at Novak when he got defaulted from the US Open, that was a fluke. In my opinion, that was way less intentional than what Daniil Medvedev did.” He further added, “He was swatting the ball back towards the tarp, which you can do with no fault pretty much all the time. Novak didn’t hit it out of bounds. It just happened to hit someone and he hit it with a little more force. This was actually more intentional. Listen, up is down, down is up, welcome to the rules of tennis.”

Roddick’s former coach, Brad Gilbert encouraged Medvedev and other players to take a look at Andy Roddick’s ‘tutorial’ on how to throw a racquet in anger. Even Roddick himself later commented on the same video clip in the podcast. He said, “I’m just trying to save these guys’ money, that’s it. Full capitalism. Just throw it face down, don’t throw it at someone.” What did Daniil Medvedev and Ben Shelton say though, after the match?

“I didn’t want to throw it” – Daniil Medvedev issues an apology after that incident in Laver Cup

Shortly after that incident, we saw Daniil Medvedev coming up with an apology, stating, “I didn’t want to throw it the way I threw it. I mean, I didn’t want — I wanted to throw it, like, on one place, so it was horrible from me.” Even he admitted that he was very lucky that it didn’t touch anyone in the crowd. Even Ben Shelton was a bit shocked by the whole incident. He initially thought the racquet had hit someone in the crowd, but later on, he was told by Mohamed Layhani that it had missed by a close margin.

However, later on, Shelton said, “I wouldn’t condone throwing a racquet into the crowd. Obviously, it was an accident…Lucky, lucky that it didn’t hit somebody. But definitely, I didn’t think that (that he should have been defaulted) after he explained it to me that he should have been defaulted.” We have heard what the players had to say after that incident, but do you think there is a serious inconsistency in the rules?

Even Brad Gilbert also shared a similar thought to that of Andy Roddick and asked for a “relook” at the tennis rules. He tweeted, “Meddy Bear (Daniil Medvedev) was pretty lucky in that racket Chuck, maybe at some point his rule needs to be relooked at more closely then umpires referee decisions.”