Can Medvedev repeat Dubai dominance?

The 2023 Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships saw Daniil Medvedev enter as the in-form player on the ATP Tour. The red-hot third seed added further fuel to his fire by blazing through the field without losing a set to win his third title in as many weeks.

Medvedev extended his winning streak to 14 matches by winning the ATP 500 crown, notching three Top 20 victories along the way. He beat Borna Coric, Novak Djokovic and Andrey Rublev in the final three rounds and did not surrender more than four games in a set throughout the week.

But the confident player who lifted the Dubai trophy was a far cry from the man who fell out of the Top 10 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings for the first time in four years just a month earlier, following an early exit from the Australian Open. After earning his debut as World No. 1 in February of 2022, Medvedev slumped at the end of that season — at least relative to his own high standards. His struggles continued at the start of 2023, until titles in Rotterdam, Doha and Dubai set him back on track.

"It is amazing because at the start of the year, it was not perfect. In tennis when you don't win matches you have doubts," Medvedev said after claiming the Dubai crown. "Now it just feels better. I was really happy with these three weeks and I am looking forward to the next ones."

He then ran his winning streak to 19 matches by reaching the Indian Wells final, before he completed a run of 24 victories in 25 matches by winning the Miami title soon after.

Medvedev now returns to Dubai as the World No. 4, joining Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner as the clear frontrunners in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, with a sizable gap between that quartet and the chasing pack. As the defending champion, Medvedev will also have the opportunity to do something he's never done before on the ATP Tour: win the same title twice.

Medvedev's packed trophy cabinet includes 20 tour-level titles, but each one has come at a different event.

"It's a fun fact, a fun story," Medvedev said last year in Beijing, where he was denied another title in a new city with a loss to Sinner in the final. “Honestly, [it's] not really extra motivation... I really want to win every time I step on court.

“In a way I’m really disappointed that I never managed to [successfully] defend one of my titles. Talking about the last one, the US Open was the first one I could do it. I was in the final.”

The 28-year-old has had three chances to end that statistical anomaly in recent months, but he fell short at the final hurdle at both the US Open (l. to Djokovic) and in Vienna (l. to Sinner) last season, then was stopped one set shy of his second Australian Open title in a championship defeat to Sinner at this year's Australian Open.

Since he surprised even himself by winning his first clay-court tour-level title at the Internazionali BNL d'Italia in Rome last May, Medvedev is 0-4 in finals. But if he continues to give himself opportunities to play in those big matches, it's only a matter of time before his 21st trophy follows — whether that's a repeat crown or a trophy in a brand new city.

Medvedev has another opportunity to become a repeat champion in Dubai and he'll hope another title triumph can also spark a revival of his untouchable form from this time last year. If he can sustain a similar streak in 2024, a return to the top of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings this season could be with his grasp.