Daniil Medvedev appears mad as hell at the Australian Open ahead of final against Rafael Nadal

«Will you answer my question? Look at me. I'm talking to you.»

Like an irate chef taking out the night's frustrations on a down-on-their-luck kitchen hand, Daniil Medvedev delivered another masterclass in losing the plot during his semifinal defeat of Stefanos Tsitsipas on Friday night.

Has anyone ever sincerely asked someone, «are you stupid?», and come out of the exchange looking good?

It didn't do all that much to endear Medvedev to viewers when he posed that question to chair umpire Jaume Campistol during his semi-final meltdown, berating Campistol for doing nothing about Tsitsipas's father supposedly coaching his son from the stands.

Ironically, as the commentators pointed out on the telecast, Tsitsipas really doesn't like it when his father coaches him during games.

If this was all you knew about the two players, you might not be surprised to learn the fans leant heavily pro-Tsitsipas, leaving Medvedev again playing heel to a crowd often about as respectful to him as he was to the chair umpire.

A player throwing a wobbly is no surprise in men's tennis, but what makes the 25-year-old Russian's outlandish emotional vulnerability so thrilling is that it's such a strange case.

People differ on their approval levels of Nick Kyrgios's on-court act — the sulks you can set your watch to; part petulance, part chaos-agent showmanship — but his charisma and I'm-just-trying-to-figure-it-all-out personality can often win over even the harshest of critics.

Then you have the Medvedev outburst that, seemingly lacking all self-awareness, as if scripted to get the crowd offside, is probably best watched peaking through your fingers.

Medvedev can go from unflappable to positively flapped in a hot second.

First, he's at work, out rallying his