Medvedev's Serving Shocker, Eala over Swiatek & 3rd Round Results | Wimbledon 2026

**Gill Gross** (0:02)
Welcome, everyone, to Monday Match Analysis. I'm Gill Gross. It is the Wimbledon 2026 third round show. So glad you're here. How many banger matches did we just witness over the course of the last two days? Quite a few of them. Just got done enjoying a couple of five setters late on Saturday, which was Berrettini, Dimitrov, and of course, Bublik, Tiafoe. Gonna talk about those matches. The Swiatek upset against Eala earlier today. But I want to start with I think the headlining upset on the men's side as far as round three is concerned. I want to put it in the title. I just think it's a pretty important result, and it was an interesting one in terms of how it played out. That is Daniil Medvedev losing in straight sets to Jan-Lennard Struff. Now I actually recorded today's third round show in two parts. Late last night, the matches were fresh in my mind, and I really just wanted to kind of get it out while it was fresh. So I'm going to toss to myself from last night talking about some of these matches from Friday. And as I said, let's start with Struff over Medvedev in straights. Daniil Medvedev losing in the first couple rounds of a major once again, this time in somewhat shambolic fashion. I don't know what other word to use. He's up a break in all three sets. He's up 5-2 double break in set three. And he loses that set without playing a tie break. His serve is broken three times successively in the third set to fall in straights against a guy who he had an 8-1 head-to-head against. Albeit, one of the losses was in Holla on the grass. So now you're looking at that Struff Medvedev head-to-head. It's 7-0 Medvedev on hard court and clay. It's 2-1 Struff on grass. All right, that's interesting. We can talk about that. I do want to give my flowers to Jan-Lennard Struff. What a story that is. 37 years old, hip surgery and all. And he is still breaking new ground in his career. First time to the fourth round at Wimbledon. And I got to say, it's one of those where I spent a lot of years scratching my head about why Struff was not winning matches at Wimbledon. I always looked at his game and he's one of those guys who prefers the natural surface. He actually likes the ball sitting up with a little bit of extra time on clay. But he's one of those guys I always looked at as somebody whose best surface should probably be grass. And Wimbledon was not the happiest of hunting grounds for him for a long, long time. Great to see, I should also mention, two majors in a row where he's taken out a top tier player. Bublik at Roland Garros, Medvedev at Wimbledon. And on both occasions, I thought Struff was lights out. So I thought he was lights out. Forehand caught fire in the third set. Obviously, he comes at you with his aggressive returning. He has a great identity. He's getting forward against Daniil Medvedev, which is a play that has worked against him on this surface in particular. You think about when Medvedev lost to Hurkacz a few years back, and Hubie was really getting a ton in that match. So it's something that's available against Medvedev when you're playing Medvedev on grass. I also felt that this was a supremely disappointing serving performance from Daniil Medvedev.
Now, coming into the matchup, I figured he might have some trouble hitting second serves to Struff.
Struff is a great attacker of second serves. Medvedev's, you know, when he tries to hit that stock kick serve, it's a pretty slow, vulnerable second serve. Oftentimes, he needs to take on a little bit extra risk and hit the quicker slice serve. Sometimes you see the double faults go up. And recently, I will say that I feel as if, under pressure, the second serve is a lot more likely to crack. I feel like it's been sensitive to scoreboard situations. Medvedev double faulted 10 times in this match, and I was not surprised when he double faulted in the third set, down match point 30-40, 5-6.
Sometimes he's going big on these second serves, sometimes not, whatever. That I expected. It's hard to hit second serves to Struff. He's just going to try to light you up off the return every time, and he's very good at it, and there's no safe wing to go to. So that's kind of Struff's bread and butter. That's how we break serve. I got that. The lack of effectiveness on the first serve for Medvedev, shocking to me. Shocking.