It may have taken five years, but reigning Nitto ATP Finals champion Grigor Dimitrov is back where it all started. The Bulgarian, who spent time training in Spain as a junior and received his first qualifying wild card into an ATP World Tour event in Barcelona 12 years ago as a 16-year-old, is competing in the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell for the first time since 2013. “Now that I’m back here, it brings back so many good memories,” Dimitrov said. “I practically spent my junior years out here, so it’s just pretty much coming back to the same courts where I used to practise and of course hang around, and just be a kid.” The World No. 5 will hope...
Fifty years ago, tennis was a non-commercial enterprise with amateur players receiving tournament expenses, often better than the living wage, and were still able to compete in the world’s leading tennis tournaments. Across the great divide, ever since the first pro tour in 1926, were a small band of former amateurs turned contract pros, who had been banished from the public spotlight and criss-crossed the globe in search of a pay cheque. Over the course of one eventful decade, starting in the late 1950s, a handful of leading powerbrokers began to effect a change in the way the sport was promoted, for a free, shared market that led to the modern professional game of superstar athletes. The featherboard fence, on...
Straight after World No. 1 Rafael Nadal closed out his semi-final victory over reigning Nitto ATP Finals champion Grigor Dimitrov Saturday at the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters and shook hands, he took his cell phone out of his bag momentarily. Why? “I was texting Carlos to tell him that we need to book a court quick,” Nadal said of sending a message to his coach, former World No. 1 Carlos Moya. “That's all.” It was back to practice on a distant court for the 10-time Monte-Carlo champion, despite not losing more than four games in a set during his impressive 34-set winning streak on clay. [ALSO LIKE] “I did it a lot of times in my career,” Nadal said of practising right...
Grigor Dimitrov has a lot going for him. He is the reigning Nitto ATP Finals champion and sits inside the Top 5 of the ATP Rankings. The Bulgarian also made the semi-finals this week at the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters. But that doesn’t make an 11th FedEx ATP Head2Head loss against World No. 1 Rafael Nadal (1-11) any easier. “I value sometimes more the lessons. I hate losing,” Dimitrov said. “You see me with a smile. I'm a positive person. Deep down, I'm hurt. I hate losing. Simple as that. But it's life… hopefully in the future I will be able to turn that around. There's still going to come a day that I feel I can do that or beat...
Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray have faced off 24 times in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series (Nadal, 17-7). But, off the court, the two can easily put aside their rivalry and resume their friendship, as evidenced by a recent phone call between the two ATP World Tour greats. Murray, who's rehabbing from surgery on his right hip, and Nadal, who knows the rehab process well, chatted on the phone a couple of weeks ago, Nadal said on Friday after his Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters quarter-final win against Dominic Thiem. [ALSO LIKE] Nadal and Murray also talked in Melbourne in January, when the Scot had planned on competing at the Australian Open but later aborted that idea and underwent surgery. “I don't...
