Fed up with nicknames, Grigor Dimitrov plays it straight

Date: January 4, 2014

Linda Pearce, Sports writer for The Age

Grigor Dimitrov no longer wears pink tennis shoes. Gone, too, from his ATP profile are the nicknames ''Baby Fed'' (enough about Roger) and ''Showtime'' (flamboyance being so 2013). The colour in Dimitrov's game is being toned down, even as his status as Maria Sharapova's handbag ensures a long lens trained on more than just his backhand.

Dimitrov, 22, is the exciting Bulgarian tipped in a 2013 crystal-ball exercise by French sports bible L'Equipe to be the world No.1 in May 2018. He reached his first ATP final in Brisbane 12 months ago, beat Novak Djokovic in Madrid and won his first title in Stockholm in October, early in his new collaboration with Australian coach Roger Rasheed.

Having started with Lleyton Hewitt, before guiding Gael Monfils and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Rasheed had to be convinced. Still, the South Australian left a flying visit to Los Angeles confident that his new client was committed to graduating from promising to proven. To Rasheed, you're in, or you're not. Despite a second-round loss in Brisbane this week, a testing pre-season saw the first long-term foundations laid.

''I've never been scared of work, and especially going to the gym it's nice to have someone to challenge you, even though it's tough at the moment for me,'' says Dimitrov. Which is as it should be, says Rasheed, who uses the questions he asks daily in training to provide some reliable character-based answers. ''It's a great measure of what could actually happen down the track on the court when the heat's on.''

But, before that, the shoes: off. Just as Rasheed had initially ordered the outrageously athletic Monfils to pack away the party tricks, the message to Dimitrov was to limit the crazy low-percentage stuff - ''one of the first things Roger said to me was 'no more shenanigans','' laughs the world No. 23 - and bin the undignified footwear.

''He was like, 'From tomorrow, you're no longer playing with pink shoes' and I was OK, OK,'' Dimitrov recalls. Rasheed's version: ''I said to Grigor, 'Listen mate, first things first, you will never wear pink with me, ever'. So he's gone, 'Really? … OK. No worries'.

''It's almost a footy mentality, like a coach going 'what are you doing with that headband, or that ponytail, or something, get that off'. So there's a little bit of that, but I'm also really keen for Grigor to create his own image.''

Which, clearly, means no more of the ''Baby Fed'' talk that began with Federer's former coach Peter Lundgren, who also worked with Dimitrov for a time at the Mouratoglou Academy in Paris. There is, undeniably, common ground in style, mechanics, and footwork, including that gorgeous one-handed backhand. But, inevitably, what was once a compliment became an irritation. ''Early on in my career at some point it was kinda fun to hear it, and I thought it was gonna stop eventually,'' Dimitrov says. ''But actually with every and each year it was just growing more and more and more, and people would keep talking about and mentioning that, so at some point I started feeling really uncomfortable with that cos I'm like 'guys, that's not my name, and that's not me'. So I guess I had to do something about it, and I guess I've proved quite a few things and shut a couple of doors for that.''

Necessarily, says Rasheed, who requested the nickname be cut from the ATP's 2014 media guide. ''That's just overdone, overused. It's good for the hype, and in the media and all that sort of stuff. I understand all that, that's all cool, but he wants to be his own person. They do have a lot of similarities, but as much as it's a good thing to have at the start, eventually you've got to move it on.''

Which leaves, instead, a whole lot about Maria. And that may not be a bad thing. ''Maria's hungry. She's got that great mentality that she wants to get out there and kill,'' Rasheed notes. ''So you're going into that space, you're watching someone who's been very dedicated and devoted, regardless of what dollar signs are near her name.

''That's irrelevant. To be out injured killed her. She lives to be on the tennis court, so I think that's a great rub-off, and they've worked it very well. They know they've both got jobs to do, so I don't think that's ever going to hinder [Dimitrov's] pathway.''

A former junior Wimbledon and US Open champion, Dimitrov has not been surprised by the media interest in his love life, as little as he says he reads about it. ''For sure, we know Maria's Maria, after all, and you can't hide that obviously, and everything happened so fast … but it's been a great thing though, it's been a great feeling, and I'm very happy with the situation of course.''

There is some tennis talk, naturally, ''but nothing serious and precise. We have a lot of common things outside tennis, so for us we're busy almost 100 per cent of our time, getting on court and preparing and fitness and all this and all that, so when we go home we just kinda want to have our time together and have nothing else to interrupt it. It's very precious time and I think we both cherish it in a very good way.''

Do they practice together? ''We've been hitting a few times. She's a great hitter. I've never doubted that. I always think that she'll cut me a bit of slack when she plays against me, but she's very competitive. But I give her a few of my shots, so that's different.''

Very. Rasheed likens Dimitrov's fondness for what the young star calls his ''weird'' shots born out of boredom in the time it took the freakishly talented Federer to shape and secure a game with so many options. But, enough. ''I've said to him, 'Do I want to see at the end of a tennis match three minutes of the highlight reel where you're featuring for 2½ minutes but you've lost three and three?' I'd rather not see that,'' Rasheed said.

''There's going to be a time when certain shots come out, and he'll do that naturally at times, but it's just maturity in knowing your game. It's not a criticism at all. It's just, 'Where do you want to get to? OK, here's what it takes, these are the non-negotiables.' It's just about understanding how to get your business done.''

Rasheed, originally Hewitt's fitness trainer, believes the slightly built Dimitrov should be more advanced, physically, for his body is two years behind where it should be. Still, in pure tennis terms, his best is exceptionally good, and it is now about building consistency for the long-term, and improving a poor grand slam record of one third round from 13 attempts. There is a lot of upside, though. A lot.

''If you pooled all the young kids out there and said, 'Who could I work with and would want to work with?' He's the one that made me go, 'Yeah, I can do that amount of weeks on the road [30] and mentor him off the court and on the court.' He's 22, he's a baby,'' Rasheed said.

But not Baby Fed. Not now. And no pink shoes for this - relative - tennis infant. Rasheed may liken his new charge to a mixed lolly bag full of colourful liquorice all-sorts, but, for Dimitrov, safe and sensible blue-chip might just end up being the perfect hue.

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