2024 BNP Paribas Open men’s final preview: Carlos Alcaraz vs. Daniil Medvedev

In this rematch of the 2023 Indian Wells final, all signs—at least at first glance—point to the same result we saw last year: an Alcaraz win.

After coming into this week hearing sounds of skepticism about his game, perhaps for the first time in his career, the Spaniard has played with the determination of a young man out to prove himself all over again. In his last three matches, he turned the tables on three opponents who had beaten him within the past year, Fabian Marozsan, Alexander Zverev, and Jannik Sinner. By the end of that revenge tour, in his semifinal against Sinner, Alcaraz had regained a sense of purpose and consistency that we hadn’t seen from him since his Wimbledon title run last summer.

In Medvedev, Alcaraz will face a fourth player who defeated him in 2023. The Russian has obviously been in good form as well, defusing two younger threats, Holger Rune and Tommy Paul, in his last two matches. Against Paul, Medvedev lost the first set 6-1, but showed the depth of his own determination by coming back to win in three.

The problem for Medvedev would seem to be his recovery time. After rain delayed play multiple times on Saturday, he finished that draining three-set semi late in the evening. Now he’ll have to come back less than 24 hours later to face a guy who will force him to be as springy and alert as he can be. Alcaraz also likes these slow hard courts more than Medvedev. Last year’s final wasn’t much of a contest, as Alcaraz exploited Medvedev’s deep court positioning by taking over the net. It sounds as the Spaniard he has something similar planned for Sunday.

“I know how I have to play against him,” Alcaraz said of the prospect of facing Medvedev. “I have played [him] many times, final against him last year, so I know pretty well the tactics against him.”

“But I’m not gonna tell you guys the tactics, sorry,” he added with a smile.

Still, don’t count Medvedev out quite yet. Few picked him to beat Alcaraz in their semifinal at last year’s US Open, but he pulled it off with a masterful display of serving and returning. And few thought he would stand a chance against Sinner in this Australian Open final, after he had slogged through two five-set wins in the quarters and semis. Yet he surprised everyone by jumping out to two-set lead.

Medvedev’s normal process against Alcaraz might be to weather the early storm of crowd-pleasing winners and slowly work his way into the match. I’m not sure if he’ll have the energy to wait that long. Medvedev, normally content to rally and counterpunch, has shown the ability to surprise people with his aggression, and maybe this is the time to try to do that again in the early going.

Medvedev seems to be thinking along those same (red) lines.

“If I want to win, I will try to see what I can do tactically,” he said after his semifinal. “But then I have to go there, a little bit like Tommy [Paul] did today, try to play on the line, try to hit some amazing shots, get into his head, and try to win like this.”

It should, hopefully, be a more interesting contest than last year. But it should end the same way. Winner: Alcaraz