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By Giri Nathan
[vc_empty_space height="15px"]Daniil Medvedev getting the No. 2 seed at the clay major is its own punchline. In the seedings, the tall Russian who despises clay is flanked on either side by arguably the second- and unarguably the first-best male player ever to touch clay, in Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. So why is Meddy seeded No. 2? The French Federation doesn’t give weight to surface-specific results, like Wimbledon does for grass, so the seeds at Roland-Garros faithfully reproduce the overall tour rankings. This is sound enough—Medvedev’s hard-court genius absolutely earned that No. 2 slot in the world, which he is the first person not named Roger, Rafa, Novak, or Andy Murray to occupy since 2005-—but it is also really funny. Heading into this tournament, No. 2 seed Daniil Medvedev had almost as many tour-level victories on clay (11) as No. 3 seed Rafa Nadal had French Open titles (13). He had never won a match at the French Open, either: fourth-set retirement in 2017, a straight-set loss in 2018, a five-set defeat in 2019, and, even after his surge to the apex of the tour, a first-round loss to Marton Fucsovics in 2020. These courts in Paris have not been kind to him.