Dimitrov, Paul race into Wimbledon second week

Grigor Dimitrov and Tommy Paul both took a fast pass to the Wimbledon fourth round Friday.

One day after rallying from two sets down to fend off #NextGenATP star Shang Juncheng, 10th-seeded Dimitrov raced past French veteran Gael Monfils 6-3, 6-4, 6-3 in a battle between two former Wimbledon boys’ champions, who had not met for eight years prior to today.

[ATP APP]

”Good match. Much better than yesterday,” Dimitrov said. “Obviously it’s never easy when you have to come back to play the next day after playing five sets. But I’m just glad the way I played, I put the match together, and also the way I recovered. I think that was the key.”

Advancing to the fourth round for the second straight year – but just the fourth time in 14 appearances at The All England Club – Dimitrov will next play the winner of fifth seed Daniil Medvedev and German Jan-Lennard Struff.

Dimitrov said that he was happy with the state of his game and is fully onboard with the game plan devised by his team, which coach Dani Vallverdu said this time last year at Wimbledon needed to focus on Serve +1 forehands and using more slice on the backhand.

“As a player you tend to have a seriously big ego.,” Dimitrov said. “I think this is also a point where I think that the maturity needs to kick in a little bit to listen a little bit more to your team because, they scout, they watch matches, speak to stats people and stuff like that where they have a little more knowledge of things. You have to be fairly open-minded. I always try to do that, to be as mindful of that.

“Sometimes as a player you are, like, ‘You know what, I know better’, which is the case a lot of the time. But in the same time, you have to have also full trust in your team and in yourself. So I think when those two things come together, you find a middle ground.”

Paul, the 12th-seeded American, enjoyed his first straight-sets win of the tournament, easing past Kazakhstani Alexander Bublik 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 to reach the fourth round for the second time in three years. Paul won 85 per cent (44/52) of his first-serve points and struck 37 winners to just 14 unforced errors, advancing after 86 minutes. Paul is aiming to reach the quarter-finals at Wimbledon for the first time.

Next up for the recent Queen’s champion is the winner of a battle between former Top 10 PIF ATP Rankings stars Fabio Fognini and Roberto Bautista Agut. Italian Fognini leads the pair’s Lexus ATP Head2Head series 7-3 and also leads their match, which has been suspended for the night due to rain, 6-7(6), 6-3, 7-5, 4-5.

[NEWSLETTER FORM]