Daniil Medvedev has lived through some wild nights in New York, but even by his standards this was surreal: a full‑throated rant at the chair umpire over two tiny brown birds sitting on the net.
On an adjacent court, Kim Birrell was enduring her own kind of nightmare.
Birrell blitzed in brutal opening set
The Australian found herself overwhelmed by Ekaterina Alexandrova, who tore through the opening set 6-1 in just over 20 minutes.
It was as lopsided as the score suggests. Birrell trailed 5-0 almost before she had settled into the contest, struggling to land first serves and unable to blunt the Russian’s heavy, flat groundstrokes. Only a late hold spared her the indignity of a double bagel.
Alexandrova, the No.18 seed, earned two set points. Birrell fended off one, briefly halting the avalanche, but the reprieve was fleeting. The Russian closed the set at the second time of asking, underlining the gulf in tempo and authority.
Medvedev fumes over bird let call
Across the grounds, Medvedev was cruising on the scoreboard but boiling inside.
In the second set of his straight-sets win over American Sebastian Gorzny, chair umpire Timo Janzen allowed a rally to unfold with two small brown birds perched brazenly on top of the net. The point continued, Medvedev unloaded on a forehand, Gorzny failed to get the ball back — and only then did chaos descend.
As one of the birds finally flapped away, Janzen called a let and ordered the point to be replayed.
Medvedev exploded.
“This is the most ridiculous decisions I’ve seen in my life … this is very bad,” he snapped toward the chair, incredulous that the interruption came only after he had struck what looked like a clean winner.
From the commentary box, Sam Querrey sided with the Russian’s confusion, openly questioning the timing of the call.
"That was incredible … how did they not move before? I've never seen that before in my life," Querrey said. "It had to be a let, surely. I just don't know why it took (Janzen) so long to call it."
The incident slotted neatly into Medvedev’s long highlight reel of New York drama. Asked afterward where it ranked in a career full of chaotic and bizarre moments, he did not hesitate.
“This would be definitely in the top five,” he said.
He then laid out his frustration with the stop‑start decision.
“When they came in, I thought, ‘OK, the referee is going to stop the point’, and he let it play, like, ‘OK, let’s play.’ And the moment I hit the winner, he was, like, ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’”
Another chapter in Medvedev’s New York theatre
Arthur Ashe and Louis Armstrong have seen this movie before.
Last year on Armstrong, Medvedev crashed out in the first round after another prolonged flare-up with the umpire, that time over Benjamin Bonzi being granted a second serve when a photographer mistakenly stepped onto the court too early. The argument dragged on for more than six minutes and set the tone for a flat, frustrated exit.
Go back to 2019 on the same court and the memories are even more vivid: the middle-finger incident, the running battles with the crowd, and the post-match interview in which he famously invited fans to keep booing him. That performance cost him US$9,000 in fines and cemented his role as New York’s favourite villain.
This latest outburst, sparked not by a rival or a rogue official but by a pair of birds, felt like a lighter entry in that catalogue. The 2021 champion cooled quickly once the match was done.
“It’s OK,” he said. “It happens.”
For Medvedev, it was another win, another story, another strange twist in a city that never seems to let him play a routine match.
