Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov achieved the biggest win of his career so far on Tuesday night at the Mutua Madrid Open by defeating top-ranked Novak Djokovic 7-6, 6-7, 6-3.
“Of course this has been what I’ve been working for, to play matches like that, and why not win them?” Dimitrov said. “Today was one of these days that I felt good on court. I felt I had enough hours of practice in the weeks before. I felt that I could actually hang with Novak the whole match. That’s the whole purpose of getting ready for big events and eventually for big matches.”
The epic match lasted three hours and five minutes.
Djokovic seemed headed to seal the first set with three set points up but Dimitrov bravely fought back, including being down 6-4 in the tie-breaker. The second set saw a comeback from Djokovic with Dimitrov being up 4-2. The Serb took a medical timeout to re-taped the right ankle after he slipped. It can be remembered that he injured his right ankle on his way to winning his most recent event, the Monte Carlo Masters.
The third set was all Dimitrov, breaking Djokovic’s serve for a 2-0, the Bulgarian did not slouch off and held himself the rest of the way to secure his first victory out of three meetings with Djokovic.
“I thought the tie-break was pretty intense obviously,” said Dimitrov. “He stepped up on a few shots. He’s Novak. In the end of the day, you can expect anything from him. He played a great tie-break, so I couldn’t do much… Of course I tried to stay really positive. I believed in myself. I think that was the big sparkle coming into the third set.”
