It’s around 20 months since Grigor Dimitrov was riding high as the number three men’s tennis player in the word. As third seed for the 2018 Australian Open, it felt like things were setting up for a wonderful year after he had reached his career pinnacle by winning the ATP Finals a few months previously. Indeed, Dimitrov had pushed all the way through to the quarter finals at the Australian Open, before crashing out to the unseeded Kyle Edmund.
Is it relevant to look back then to contextualise where Dimitrov is today? Well, one would argue that there were signs of Dimitrov’s issues even when getting to the quarter finals of the Australian Open, his best-ever finish in a Grand Slam. To be frank, Dimitrov is a better player than Edmund, and the Bulgarian should have been celebrating a first ever Grand Slam semi-final. But the signs were there in that match; Dimitrov looked subdued, and he really couldn’t get a handle on his serve. It’s been a theme that has followed him for the last 20 months.
Dimitrov has fallen out of top 50
The rest of 2018 saw struggles with form, and 2019 hasn’t been much better. It took Dimitrov nearly six months to win his 10th match of this year, and he plummeted outside of the world’s top 50; his lowest ranking since 2012. Dimitrov has bobbed about around the top 50 throughout the last few months, and he hasn’t really been able to gain any momentum. For example, it took him until the end of July to gain his first win after exiting the French Open.
Dimitrov’s struggles have perhaps been best summed up by the latest betting for the US Open, where sites like 888sport have cited the Bulgarian as 180/1 for the last Grand Slam of the season. Yes, Dimitrov has not reach the final of a Grand Slam before, nor has be been beyond the fourth round of the US Open, but it’s still a massive gap to players like Marin Cilic (40/1) and Stanislas Wawrinka (33/1), with whom Dimitrov once looked upon as peers. It seems a far cry from two years ago when Dimitrov was placed among the top seeds.
Dimitrov can learn from Djokovic comeback
The question for fans of the Bulgarian is if this is a sustained drop in form or an overall decline? With each passing tournament, the latter looks more likely than the former. There have been injuries, of course, but there is something not quite right about Dimitrov’s game, and it’s disappointing to see a player decline when he really should be at his peak. Dimitrov turned 28 in May, meaning he should have least five years at the top of his game.
There is, however, plenty of inspiration for Dimitrov to take from other players: Novak Djokovic had almost two years in the relative wilderness, before bouncing back last summer; Juan Martin Del Potro fell outside the world top 250 players at the start of the decade, but was able to get back among the best of the world. Yet, players like Del Potro and Djokovic have had the mental discipline to return to the summit of tennis. Does Dimitrov have such mental fortitude? We will soon find out.
