Grigor Dimitrov remembers well his first visits to the lush lawns of the Queen’s Club in London. ‘I was 17 and staying with friends at the end of the Northern Line. I had no coach, nobody, and took the Tube every morning at 6am. It was an hour and a half to get to Barons Court. I had my Oyster card, and was just a guy with a racket bag, listening to my music.’
That was a junior tournament in 2008. Chances are his fellow commuters barely noticed the lanky teenager in a baseball cap, nodding away to his headphones. Fast-forward to last summer and things were very different. Dimitrov had just triumphed at the Aegon Championships at Queen’s, beating Feliciano López to claim the trophy, and knocked Andy Murray out of the Wimbledon quarter-finals in an imperious display of pace and power.
In action during the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters in April (GETTY)
A Centre Court crowd, including the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, murmured in collective appreciation at the thundering serves and lethal backhand slices that have become his trademark. By the end of that match the previously little-known Bulgarian had been adopted as one of our own, with the typically unimaginative British sporting nickname to boot. Arise, ‘Grigsy’, for we were all smitten.
The rise of 'Baby Fed'
It says something about the rapid rise of the current world number 10 that this summer Dimitrov has both defending his Queen’s title and winning Wimbledon in his sights. After beating Murray in 2014 he was knocked out by Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals, but remains convinced that, had he won a crucial fourth-set point, he would have gone on to secure his first Grand Slam. ‘I was playing a future star,’ Djokovic admitted.
'I have a good temper but I don’t like people crossing me too much.'
The memory of ‘Grigsy’ still raises a smile from Dimitrov, even if it is just the latest in a long line of monikers: ‘Showtime’ and ‘Primetime’ for his on-court audacity and flamboyance and ‘Baby Fed’ after Roger Federer, to whose effortless style he is supposedly the heir. But he has also found fame beyond sporting prowess.
For three years he has been in a relationship with Maria Sharapova, herself a former Wimbledon champion. They are the ‘golden couple’ of tennis, flitting between shared homes in Monaco and Los Angeles, chased by airport paparazzi along the way.
• Grigor Dimitrov ready to step out of the shadows at Wimbledon and create a legend of his own
We meet in April at the Monte-Carlo Country Club, the setting for the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters. Dimitrov, who was knocked out in the quarter-finals by Gaël Monfils, arrives wearing tortoiseshell sunglasses, a blue Nike hoodie, shorts, and a gold Rolex watch that sparkles in the Riviera sun. Despite having been practising on court that morning, his white socks and box-fresh trainers are spared even the faintest dusting of clay – and no surprise, this is a man who admits that before each Wimbledon appearance last year he insisted his shorts and T-shirt were neatly pressed.
‘I have to be fully ironed,’ he says. His love of clothes aside, he possesses a fleet of fast cars including a scissor-doored silver Mercedes SLS and, it is rumoured, a blue Porsche 911 Carrera 4S that was a gift from Sharapova. ‘Everything is customised from my watches to my phone. I like my things to be different. I get that I can come across as a show-off but that is part of who I am.’
Such accoutrements and his good looks – all dimples and deep tennis tan – have burnished his reputation as the biggest hunk on tour. Before Sharapova, Dimitrov is widely believed to have been in a brief relationship with Serena Williams. Neither party has spoken of it, although Williams made oblique reference to Sharapova being happy with the ‘guy with the black heart’ during an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 2013.
Dimitrov, 24, normally also prefers to sidestep personal questions about Sharapova, but when I ask him what he bought for her 28th birthday, which she celebrated the day before we met, a smitten grin spreads and he admits dispatching a mammoth bouquet of red roses to Stuttgart where she was playing in a tournament. ‘Her favourite, mine as well. Sometimes I just go crazy and send her hundreds – 500 is the most I’ve ever sent at once.’
Through all Dimitrov’s bling (he has already earned more than $5 million in prize money while Nike and Adidas have slugged it out over the right to dress him on court) shines an air of unaffected humility. He sits unaccompanied by minders or PRs – a rarity among sports stars – and speaks energetically and thoughtfully throughout our conversation.
‘I have always been the kind of guy to adjust to anything,’ he says. ‘I never cared where I was going to sleep or what court I was going to practise on. Sure I can afford a nice car and a nice place but this is not what brings me happiness. Now you’re on a high and people know you and things like that, but how many people will remember your name once it all stops and the money isn’t raining from the sky?’
Growing up in Bulgaria
Much of this attitude stems from his upbringing. An only child, he grew up in Haskovo, a tough city a couple of hours’ drive east from the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. His mother, Maria, was a teacher and volleyball player; his father, Dimitar, a tennis coach – a little-appreciated sport in a country where the more macho pursuits of football, weight-lifting and wrestling ruled. Aside from the extraordinary success of the Maleeva sisters, who played in the 1980s and 90s and remain the only set of three sisters ranked in the top 10 at the same time, Bulgaria had no tennis pedigree.
‘Wealth was non-existent in our vocabulary,’ he says. ‘I grew up in a really poor neighbourhood surrounded by a lot of obstacles, so to speak. It was just a tough area. It wasn’t easy to walk out on the street. There were always things happening around. It was a mixture of crime and an unsafe environment.’
By the age of three his father had given him his first tennis racket, with part of the handle sawn off to fit his grip. ‘It’s amazing but I remember that moment like it was yesterday.’ His father remains his hero. ‘He taught me everything: how to play, how to think, a little bit about what life was about.’ Even though Dimitar remains heavily involved in his coaching (alongside the Australian coach and fitness guru Roger Rasheed), and is a regular presence during tournaments, Dimitrov insists he is not the sort of domineering parental figure that is an all too familiar sight in the sport.
‘When we were out on the courts I never counted him as my dad, he was just my coach. We had fights, of course. So many times he kicked me out of practice because of my behaviour. He treated me like everybody else. That is one of my biggest assets and has helped me become the person I am. He never spoilt me. He was very clear and straight up with me from an early age.’
'How many people will remember your name once it all stops and the money isn’t raining from the sk
Such honesty became apparent when Dimitrov was a teenager, and his father admitted that an education on the cracked concrete courts of Haskovo would take him only so far. At the age of 15 he was sent to the elite Sánchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona, Andy Murray’s alma mater. The Bulgarian from the wrong side of the tracks clashed with the austere daily regime of endless hours of practice.
‘I was being really rebellious, just doing whatever I felt like. I would party non-stop, hang out with friends and was always late for practice. I got expelled from the academy a couple of times – for a lot of things, I can’t say them all.’ He gleefully recounts sneaking back in at dawn, vaulting over the security gates and past the guard dogs. ‘I would say those times were among the best of my life.’ Yet despite the hard-partying, he has never touched a drop of drink, nor smoked a cigarette. ‘I had seen what alcohol did to people.’
Training to become a tennis star
Whatever his youthful indiscretions, it was not long before the teenager was being talked about as a potential star. At a tournament in Rotterdam aged 17 he knocked out Tomáš Berdych, and then took a set off the world number one Rafael Nadal. That same year, 2008, he won the junior title at both the US Open and Wimbledon. Watch old clips of him playing and he drifts effortlessly across the court snapping into shots. There are diving volleys, scooped baseline lobs through the legs and corkscrew smashes from behind the back.
• 'You have to be loaded to play tennis in Britain - or Andy Murray'
Dimitrov speaks in near-perfect English with the indefinable accent of a life spent on tour. He has lived abroad since leaving home for Barcelona. The globetrotting life – as we meet he is preparing to go to Istanbul – puts an obvious strain on his relationship with Sharapova. They often play on opposite sides of the world and even when the men’s and women’s tournaments coincide, as they do 15 times a year, training keeps them apart. ‘It’s not as easy as everybody thinks; OK, we understand each other and all that but the absence of the other person is sometimes really strong.’
‘I have always been the kind of guy to adjust to anything.' (Ben McMahon)
His parents remain in Haskovo – ‘of course, now living in a better place’ – and when he visits Bulgaria he gets mobbed in the streets. Such fervour is matched only by the swooning ball girls of the Queen’s Club, who regard Dimitrov – the tournament organisers joke – as the tennis equivalent of One Direction. New balls, he tells me, are occasionally delivered with a whispered ‘good luck’. In 2013, while a break of serve down to the Israeli player Dudi Sela, he noticed one of the ball girls sobbing at the side of the court. ‘I told her not to worry, I will get him back,’ he says. He did.
Dimitrov has another supporter on the British scene in the shape of Chris Kermode, a former director of the Queen’s Club and now the executive chairman and president of the Association of Tennis Professionals, the sport’s governing body.
He granted Dimitrov a wild card (where low-ranked players are offered a tournament place) at Queen’s in 2009 and 2010, attracting the ire of the British press who claimed it was at the expense of home-grown talent. The pair remain close friends, and when Dimitrov won the tournament last year he presented his racket to Kermode on court.
‘At that moment of victory to still think like that is extraordinary and obviously the measure of the lad,’ Kermode says. ‘Grigor has got drive and ambition but holds himself so well.’
But even under Kermode’s patronage Dimitrov says he has had to battle against snobbery from within the sport; the perception that he is ‘just a Bulgarian guy’. ‘It means it’s just a little poor country and what am I doing here, basically. That’s fine with me. I have had the opportunity to change my nationality but I never chose that.’
He admits the carousel of the tour, where one is endlessly pitched into battle against the same opponent, is an exhausting process, and doesn’t count any of his fellow players as close friends. ‘For me after I’m done on the court I don’t think about tennis at all. I like to keep my distance, absolutely.’
'The golden couple'
Sharapova, obviously, is the exception. How, I wonder, did he pluck up the courage to ask her out on a date – aside from her 6ft 2in statuesque figure she is quite clearly as hard as nails – particularly as at that time he was a relative minnow in the game? He reacts with incredulity. ‘Everyone says that. I know when you see her you don’t want to even talk to her but to me I knew there was something behind that. I emailed her out of the blue. I felt we always had this thing for each other.
'We were both in China, me in Shanghai, her in Beijing. I sat down for lunch and saw her playing on television and emailed right away. We started talking a bit, then a month later when the season was over we saw each other and that became that.’
He says they spend their time together as any normal couple would, taking walks, shopping, eating out. ‘Regarding the “golden couple”, in a way I guess it’s inevitable for people to say that but for me – and it may sound very cheesy – she is just Maria. I don’t see her how everybody else does. Other things in life are much more important than that. It’s about the person and how they are with me. She’s the greatest competitor that is still playing the game but that stops right there for me because I feel I’m a much deeper person than all that.’
Sharapova’s professional influence, however, is obvious. For a period, Dimitrov’s youthful promise gave way to the feeling that his progress had stalled. In 2011, after qualifying for his first Grand Slam (the Australian Open), he made it to just outside the top 50, but finished the year ranked 70. By early 2012 he had dropped out of the top 100 altogether. He admits now that he felt the pressure.
‘I don’t see tennis being my life for ever. I’m winning and my goals are far ahead but after that I’m done with tennis. I’ll never be a good coach’
In 2013 a pre-match pep talk from Sharapova led to a breakthrough victory against Djokovic in the second round of the Madrid Open, his first over a member of the top five. He has since surged up the rankings. ‘It was just the simplicity of what she said. Sometimes when you go back to basics it is a winning combination. It happened to be that moment.’
He says she also helps keep in check his anger, a vestige of his tough upbringing which he admits has stayed with him in adulthood. ‘I think I have a good temper but I don’t like people crossing me too much.’ This was apparent during a game in Helsinki in 2010 where Dimitrov pushed an umpire – a cardinal sin not even John McEnroe ever committed.
‘Oof,’ he winces at the memory. ‘I’ve seen him since a couple of times and said hello, but he doesn’t really like me. I try to be very respectful anyway.’ Nowadays, his violent outbursts are restricted to breaking rackets, currently at the rate of about 20 a year – a number he regards as an improvement.
Life after tennis
Follow Grigor Dimitrov on the social media site Instagram, as 191,000 (and rising) people do, and you would not immediately guess he was a tennis player. There are photographs of him playing guitar, cycling, jumping into azure oceans and posing by graffiti-covered walls; it all looks like the faintly rebellious construct of a male-modelling agency. Similarly, during the photo-shoot for this interview his eyes light up when he hears he won’t have to pose holding a racket. Instead, he drapes himself, panther-like, over the country club’s sun-bleached walls.
Why, then, his apparent disdain for the sport? ‘For some people it is their life but I don’t see tennis being that for ever. Right now this is my priority and what I want to do. I’m winning and my goals are far ahead but after that I’m done with tennis. I like designing, creating and working on new things. I’ll never be a good tennis coach.’
For now, though, his ambitions are clear: to win that Grand Slam. ‘I’ve already been thinking like this for more than a few years but it’s never easy to make that next step and really jump over the hurdle. Once you find that real good formula you know the results will come. The same thing happened to Andy, for example, Novak, Rafa, too. You see it in their eyes.’
This summer, perhaps, English grass will provide the springboard for similar success. Make no mistake, behind those designer sunglasses the same fire burns.
