Actually Grigor Dimitrov wanted to begin in the interview for game analysis. He wanted to tell what had gone well that evening, how it could come to defeat the big favorite. But then he interrupted himself in the middle of a sentence and said only: "I'm just happy." Sometimes just five words are enough to make a memorable evening. This evening, when Dimitrov beat the big Roger Federer in the quarter-finals of the US Open, could turn out to be a turning point in his career.
In the career of a player who always seemed a bit more possible than in reality.
Grigor Dimitrov, this is the one about whom nobody loses a bad word and everyone can tell an anecdote in tennis. Only in the previous year staged him the player organization ATP - after a survey among the other players - in their own video offer as the most beautiful face of tennis. In the video, Dimitrov laughed sheepishly, and the world was having fun. This is how Dimitrov is often perceived: beautiful, nice - and harmless.
Semifinal feels ☺ @ GrigorDimitrov | #USOpen pic.twitter.com/rIYfHGF98j
- US Open Tennis (@usopen) September 4, 2019Even on the field, the 28-year-old Bulgarian in the past has often noticed more as a stylist than as Winnertyp. He combines the elegant curves of earlier decades with the athleticism of modern tennis - and brings together what Federer has brought in 20 Grand Slam titles. Dimitrov's style brings out the spectacular: when he slips back and forth on the court and with his one-handed backhand still quite controlled a passier ball accommodates, opens up quickly, why he is such a crowd favorite.
But is that enough in a world that rewards efficiency more than anything else? Will he always miss the rabiate, the ability to make a strategic attack that will bring less applause but more secure success?
Charles Krupa AP
His big moment: Roger Federer congratulates him on the victory
After a catastrophic summer that left him at the US Open Preparatory tournament in Atlanta even against the world number 405 Kevin King, Dimitrov traveled without form and without his trainers Radek Stepanek and Andre Agassi to New York. Where the two are, he has been asked again and again in the past few days. Dimitrov lashed out, speculating that "perhaps they wanted to kick him in the ass by not appearing". Because Dimitrov is far from the time when he was listed in the world rankings in third place and in November 2017, the year-end tournament of the top eight men's professionals had won.
Even on Dimitrov's best days, Federer was too strong
But here at the US Open he managed in the quarter-finals something that had proven to be too big a hurdle even in his best days to date: a win against Roger Federer. The player with whom Dimitrov had always been compared, whose agency he once had under contract. Federer seemed to struggle with the muggy conditions and his own back. But after the match, Federer pointed out: "This is Grigor's moment and not my body."
Elsa AFP
So one saw him too seldom: Dimitrov wildly determined
A moment in which Dimitrov was fitter, playing better and not hesitating when it came to bringing an important career match to the finish line with determination.
Although Dimitrov meets in the semifinals with Daniil Medvedev on the best player of the summer, on the one who is blessed with tactical instinct and who challenged in the last few days with his foolhardy way the New York audience only by provocations - then by his boos to drift into the semifinals. But Medvedev seemed physically battered in his quarterfinal victory. Dimitrov should not be without a chance to reach the first grand slam finale of his career.
Perhaps these days he is also reminiscent of another charismatic player who at one and only one time, at the age of 28, also fulfilled his great talent. Stan Wawrinka was just as old when, surprisingly, he defeated Novak Djokovic in the quarter-finals at the Australian Open in 2014 and subsequently won the first major title of his career.