Daniil Medvedev has proven to be one of the toughest outs on the ATP Tour the past few years. As one of the few players apart from Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic to hold the world number one ranking in recent memory.
His game is a bit quirky: his strokes are far from textbook, he prefers to grind points from far behind the baseline, and he serves bombs. Apart from the serving, many tennis fans have bemoaned that a player towering at nearly two meters (6 ft 6 in) chooses to play anything but all out offense.
He chooses to slide around the court from fifteen to twenty feet behind the baseline, looping the ball deep back to his opponents and covering every inch that he can with surprising speed for somebody so tall.
Medvedev is so adept at retrieving his opponents’ heavy shots that some commentators have nicknamed him “The Tennis Octopus.” Despite a style of play that is atypical for his stature, Daniil’s success speaks for itself.
Let’s take a dive into the Russian’s equipment.
Here’s Daniil Medvedev’s current Racquet setup:
- Endorsed Racquet: Tecnifibre T Fight ISO 305
- Actual Racquet: Tecnifibre T Fight Dynacore 95
- Strings: Tecnifibre Razor Code White between 20 and 22 kg
The Face of Tecnifibre
Daniil has used Tecnifibre racquets for most of his time on the tour, switching from Wilson early on during his professional career.
He first started with the T Fight Dynacore 95 which is very similar to the Wilson Six One 95 that he switched from. It has an 18×19 pattern rather than the Six One’s 18×20 but shares a 95 square inch head size and semi-stiff but still responsive layup.
It’s a super controlled frame which is great for Medvedev. He requires superb depth control and precision from his racquets in order to hit his angled passing shots and to find the right area of the court when defending from so far behind the baseline.
Though he endorses the new T Fight ISO, it’s still the same old Dynacore model under the paintjob.
- One of Daniil’s old Wilsons next to his new Tecnifibre frames was shared on a popular online tennis forum. The poster claims to have obtained these from Daniil’s sister. You can see the extended yoke, rounded PWS, and 18×20 string pattern on the Wilson, revealing it to be a Six.One 95 rather than the Pro Staff 97 it is painted as.
Specs
Daniil essentially plays the specs of a stock Six.One 95 with a small bit of added weight, likely to the hoop.
His Tecnifibres were originally a 305g frame, so there is much more mass that has been added as compared to his Wilsons.
A popular and reputable online shop for pro stock racquets has sold at least one of Medvedev’s frames and serves as a resource for his specs. They are as follows:
- Strung mass: 354g
- His mass has been reported between 354g and 359g, so he may have experimented a bit or the specs could have been measured with or without overgrip or dampener.
- Strung balance: 31.4 cm
- Strung swingweight: 347
Though this is a heavy racquet with a high swingweight, the very headlight balance makes it more maneuverable and easier to handle, especially when pressed for time on defense.
This was a defining characteristic of the Wilson Six.One 95 line all the way back to the Pro Staff Classic.
Generally, we see specs like this in the hands of offensive baseliners, serve and volleyers, or all court players, but Medvedev has proved to be successful as a defensive baseliner with them too.
Strings
Daniil used Tecnifibre Razor Code in blue for the early part of his career and then switched to the white color of the same string.
The retail release of Tecnifibre’s Ice Code polyester coincided with his switch, but it was revealed later that he was just using white Razor Code which did eventually release at retail for consumers like us to try. Razor code is a no nonsense round polyester string that provides awesome control and feel.
Pro players don’t require extra spin and can afford to restring their racquets every match, so this definitely makes sense. He strings his Razor Code strings between 20 and 22 kilos according to a podcast interview.
This tension is about the ballpark for pros nowadays and is probably necessary to get a bit more feel and pocketing out of the tighter string pattern and small head size.
Something interesting about Medvedev, though is that he’s said he can make it through an entire match with one racquet as long as it’s not on clay.
Most players on tour prefer to swap to a fresh set of strings with every ball change or at least at the beginning of a new set, but Daniil appears to be less picky. This may also explain the slight variation we see in mass when people report his specs.
Conclusion
The lanky Russian’s play style may not match the player who we typically think of if we were just to consider his control-oriented racquet specifications. It’s hard, though, to say that his racquet doesn’t fit him well when he’s putting up such consistent and high-quality results.
He’s become the face of Tecnifibre racquets around the world and has certainly helped the brand achieve some new popularity. It’s safe to assume he’ll be around the top of the game and with the French tennis brand for some time.
If you’re interested in other ATP players’ racquets, I listed all the top 100 players’ racquets in this post.