Sinner-Dimitrov the challenge that measures the strength of Jannik

“At this moment Jannik Sinner is the best player in the world. Nightly.” You will understand, just look at the ranking for thirteen months now. The point, however, is that Grigor Dimitrov issued the verdict definitely before. It was March 2024, when the blue was not even in second place. History of the Masters 1000 Miami blue dyed with nonchalance, that yes, from number 1 to pectore: only one set granted throughout the route, and not in Dimitrov, passed in the final 6-3 6-1. The Bulgarian tries again in Wimbledon: he will leverage the experience and take into account Miami’s prophecy. After all, no one more than him saw Jannik grow.

the assault on the throne

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Whenever Sinner added a brick in his number 1 residence of the circuit, Dimitrov stationed on the other side of the net. And often lost; The budget reads 4-1 in favor of the blue. A single defeat, five years away. Then only Jannik’s successes. The last is written in bold on the history of our sport: quarter -finals of the last Roland Garros, Jannik travels with the automatic pilot after the first two sets won. Then the news of Djokovic’s forfait spreads: the blue completes the assault on the throne from number 1. And if it laughs: “I am happy with the finish line, I made many sacrifices as young and I continue to make them to improve. I made not sacrifices choices, such as that of two years ago”. Reference to the separation with coach Riccardo Piatti: Dimitrov, meanwhile, applauded on the other side of the field. By the way, Wimbledon Sinner arrives after another jolly in the team: the separation with Marco Panichi and Ulises Badio. Who knows that the intersection with the Bulgarian does not bring luck to this lap too.

The defeat of Rome

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Fast, very fast back. Grigor Dimitrov is the growth thermometer of Sinner. Who was not even twenty years old at the time of his first clash with Grisha. Masters 1000 at home, the International of Rome in autumn sauce due to Covid. The first set is blue, the bang is designed. But Dimitrov is out of the third, taking advantage above all of some lightness of a logically more inexperienced Jannik, yet able to paint a carriage of the highlights cover to cancel a break ball. The lightness, however, betrays the blue to the fifth match point of the opponent: Sinner Spiove at the net and must only crush to postpone yet another assault on the sender. But the smash is inaccurate: the Bulgarian wins. Usual South Tyrolean lucidity at the conference: “Descetta hard, I will need to grow. The game is at a fairly high level, but there are many stronger tennis players than me on the physical level. I, from that point of view, are back. I will work there”. Dimitrov takes the transition to the quarterfinals, but perhaps he does not hear the warning.

away predictability

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And then, in fact, it happens that the thermometer breaks. The time to make three years spend. Miami 2023 draws the accounts between Jannik and Grigor, the turnaround reverses above all at the level of the game: “I did a servant and volleyball and I put it in, which does not often happen” Sinner says at the end of the match. To play with the tops you need variations: “I am trying to add something to my game because I have to invest for the future. I have to be less predictable”. A concept, that of predictability, also emerged in the interview between coach Cahill and a Novak Djokovic in an external consultant version. The brick for the construction of a new Sinner arrives in Florida and still with the Bulgarian. The ending is bitter: another defeat in the last act against Medvedev. But the Russian taboo finally breaks in Beijing, in the following October: in the final, this time, Jannik wins. And who falls against the blue on the path on Chinese land? Always Dimitrov. The Bulgarian manufacturing thermometer measures Sinner’s form. In short, at a certain point the temperature does not bode well: in the middle of the match the blue vomited in a garbage can. Yet he gets the better of the third set: “He must bored me something I ate”. Probable: the passage of the round is however done. As well as the victory against Medvedev in the final: the Russian curse ends, Sinner is really ready to climb the ranking.

Chess to the king

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The Sinner-Dimitrov budget, it was said, is on 4-1. The Bulgarian accompanies the rise of Jannik in the standings. On Easter evening 2024 the blue hurries the formality in Miami: it is a final-lamp, just over an hour. The ranking becomes interesting: Sinner embarks 1000 points of extra baggage on the return from Florida and becomes the number 2 of the world. Overcoming Alcaraz. At the end of the game Dimitrov crowns him, predicting that the assault on the throne is a question of very little: “It is already the strongest in the world”. Ironically wants the number 1 to materialize, for Jannik, still against Dimitrov, this time in Paris. Check the king, as the Bulgarian had widely foreseen. Now, in Wimbledon, the thermometer will try again to sift the blue in search of tremors, jolts, indecisions. To make everything more intriguing, a stage that the two have never experienced together: the most beautiful meadows in the world.