Let’s talk about falling in love.
“What are you referring to? Go ahead, say it to me. It's okay,” Grigor Dimitrov said with a smile in Interview Room 1 in Melbourne on Monday. The Bulgarian had all the answers when defeating Denis Istomin to reach the Australian Open quarter-finals, but in his post-match press conference, he was faced with an atypical question.
“When I was young, I liked very much the young girls,” said the interviewer. “Sometimes I got distracted. So I'd like to know if you get distracted, too.”
“Let me think about it,” the No. 15 seed said with a laugh. “That was the greatest thing I've heard, man. Oh, wow… I obviously have a soft spot for that. On a serious note, I always try to keep whatever else outside the court.
"I think when I was younger, I was struggling to differentiate love from a personal love or a tennis love or whatever else. There was time, a period, that I wasn't sure how to deal with both things in the same time... I don't want to say I've learned from my mistakes, but I've learned myself a little bit better. I think that helps me. Hopefully it's going to help me for the future through any kind of falling-in-love stuff.”
Dimitrov, who remains unbeaten at 9-0 in 2017, will next face No. 11 seed David Goffin. He looks to continue his positive momentum so far this year, which saw him win his fifth ATP World Tour title at the Brisbane International presented by Suncorp (d. Nishikori). The 25 year old reflected on his relationship with tennis after reaching the last eight at Melbourne Park for the second time (also 2014).
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“I fell in love with tennis many years ago,” he said. “It was just a time that I wasn't in a really good mental place. I was, I don't want say grumpy, but there were things going on around [me]. I just needed to find that inspiration again. I needed to find that way of playing and enjoying again, loving again.
“So my best friend was tennis. 'The person,' I was counting on… That's why I said I fell in love with the game again. It gives me the excitement. It gives me all those butterflies every day coming out to a match. I count [on] those moments, and I appreciate them way more than actually some of the wins or anything like that.”
Based on Dimitrov’s current run in Melbourne, it seems like tennis is also feeling the love and reciprocating.