By Chris Oddo | Wednesday February 22, 2017
Russia's Daniil Medvedev continued his progress on the ATP Tour with a win over Benoit Paire in Marseille.
Photo: Tennis TV
The ATP will have its inaugural #NextGen Finals this November in Milan (featuring the top seven-ranked players aged 21-and-under—born 1996 or later—plus a wild card), and it looks like 21-year-old Daniil Medvedev will be in attendance.
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Medvedev, a 6’6” Russian that is quick and extremely athletic for his size, has already smashed through his career-best win total in just two months this season.
The 21-year-old won his 8th match of the season on Wednesday in Marseille, coming back from a set down to defeat Benoit Paire, 5-7, 7-5, 7-6(4), setting up a second-round battle with Germany’s Jan-Lennard Struff.
"It was a really tough match," said Medvedev, according to ATPWorldTour.com. "I'm really happy to win, because not everything was going good for me. I wasn't playing my best tennis in the first two sets. I was making a lot of unforced errors. "In my mind, I just had to keep on fighting
Heading into the season he had won just five ATP matches.
The World No.64 got past Paire in two hours and 24 minutes for his third career Top 50 win.
Medvedev recorded five wins in 2016, but had a total of 69 victories including his work on the Futures and Challenger circuit.
The Russian is currently ranked second in the Race to Milan, behind only Alexander Zverev.
In other action on Wednesday in Marseille at the Open 13 Provence, Gilles Simon defeated Julien Benneteau, 6-2, 2-6, 6-3, to reach the quarterfinals. Simon will face the Jo-Wilfried Tsonga-Ilya Marchenko winner next.
Defending champion Nick Kyrgios (d. Jaziri) and No.6-seeded Richard Gasquet (d. Youzhny) also advanced on Wednesday.