Having coached David Beckham’s son at the weekend, Grigor Dimitrov gave Marcos Baghdatis a tennis lesson of a different kind to move to the third round.
An accidental trick shot behind his back to win the second set, the splits and a dive volley on match point to seal a 6-3, 6-2, 6-1 victory, it seemed like everything was going Dimitrov’s way on No.2 Court.
“A good day at the office,” Dimitrov summed up his eighth win in nine meetings against the 2006 semi-finalist.
“Marcos is always very dangerous, especially on grass,” added Dimitrov, who won the Wimbledon boys’ singles title exactly nine years ago.
“He's done well here in the past. I felt that I was just playing good tennis; very focused, composed, and calm at the same time. I was doing everything the right way. I thought I was taking the right decisions.”
Although the pair have had some epic tussles in the past, including a five-set match won by Dimitrov at the 2015 Australian Open, Dimitrov dictated from the start against the 32-year-old veteran from Cyprus.
Playing Baghdatis for the first time at Wimbledon since 2012 – when he retired because of illness – the 26-year-old played flawless tennis for almost an hour, not getting an unforced error on the board until the last game of the second set.
Moving gracefully around the court, Dimitrov seemed to have an answer to everything Baghdatis, a former top 10 player and Australian Open finalist, threw at him.
On set point in the second set, Dimitrov ended up winning a point he had already stopped playing, slapping a backhand casually behind his back after he thought the shot had gone long. But it hadn’t and the rally continued, with Dimitrov winning it.
“I thought the ball was out so I just kept on walking to the chair, and luckily nobody said anything,” he said. “That was pure luck that I won the point. But today on days like that, you just take everything as it is and just put it behind.”
The crowd roared with delight when Dimitrov twice did the splits in one rally at 4-1 in the third set, first at the baseline and then at the net.
But the most spectacular shot came on match point, when Dimitrov moved to the third round with a dive volley reminiscent of the days of three-time winner Boris Becker.
“You dive and you pray,” Dimitrov said, who saved all seven break points, took 13 of 17 points at the net and won 79 per cent of the point on his first serve.
