Shanghai Masters tips: Grigor Dimitrov to continue his winning run to the final
We had a nice winner last week as Arthu Fils came to the party for us as an 8/5 dog against Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.
Fils hit 22 winners to underline his credentials as one of the biggest emerging talents on Tour.
The Frenchman is certainly one for the betting notebook and a player to keep an eye on in the next couple of years.
Moreover, it is important to acknowledge the little wins in life. For in a society that profits from your self-doubt, loving yourself is often a rebellious act.
To this week then. And deary me how good was Grigor Dimitrov in beating Carlos Alcaraz in Shanghai on Wednesday?
The Bulgarian was just brilliant against the top seed as he came through 5-7 6-2 6-4 to reach the quarter-finals.
Alcaraz - whose relentless whirling style and swarming feet make him a daunting challenge - was simply undone by a deadly accurate service game and rock solid ground strokes from the alluring veteran.
After the match, social media was predictably abuzz with the reasons why Alcaraz has now lost four straight tournaments since that seminal Wimbledon final victory over Novak Djokovic.
Yet his recent form is hard to attribute to the whims and vicissitudes of pseudo-psychoanalysis. Put simply, Alcaraz played well on Wednesday but Dimitrov played better. It is sport. It happens.
Dimitrov has always had the game but it’s good to see him playing with such confidence and swagger again. A player whose relatively meagre repute belies an impressive pedigree gained through years and years of grind and hard slog on the ATP Tour.
So the big question now is, can the nostalgic crowd favourite win a Masters 1000 event at the venerable age of 32? He has not won a tournament since 2017, a year where he won the ATP Masters 1000 Cincinnati and the Nitto ATP Finals.
Six years in the wilderness. However, he showed his fighting instinct had only been dimmed, not diminished, in beating 'Carlitos' and I reckon he’s a bet now at 9/2 with Planet Sport Bet to win Shanghai.
He faces Nicolas Jarry next on Friday and is a warm 4/9 favourite for that. Jarry holds a 2-0 head-to-head record against him but both of those wins were on clay and Grigor is a different animal on this type of terrain.
With a host of big names making early exits, Andrey Rublev is the 5/2 market jolly now, but that looks a little short given the Russian’s combustible nature. Dimitrov and Rublev have met six times and it is three wins apiece, so the Bulgarian won’t be fearing anyone who is left in the draw now.
One of the most adorable shots in Dimitrov’s game is his slice, while he is also a very solid net player. He should have won more given his prodigious talent, but the stars could be aligning for him in East China.
His has been a career of unfulfilled potential to this point, partly due to being around at the same time as Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
And partly due to struggling to keep it together mentally during big moments (I still can’t forget him losing the 2016 Istanbul Final to Diego Schwartzman from a set and 5-2 up, smashing three rackets in the process as he had a total meltdown in Turkey).
Yet as the late America rocker Lou Reed once crooned “Underachievers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose except your fright”.
