Grigor Dimitrov watched as his opponent, Nick Kyrgios of Australia, dug himself out of a two-sets-to-love deficit. He listened as the crowd in Rod Laver Arena grew louder and rowdier every time their man won a point. And he groaned when, serving for the match at 5-3 in the fourth set, he flipped a feeble second serve into the net and was broken.
Now, after six points in the fourth-set tiebreaker, Dimitrov found himself knotted at 3-3 with Kyrgios and staring down the barrel of an unwelcome fifth set. The Aussie was fighting in a way that he rarely fights, with a focused, undistracted positivity, and the audience was responding. When Kyrgios curled a forehand winner into the corner to make it 3-all, he raised his fist as he crossed to the other side of the court. In the battle of body language, the stalking Kyrgios had the edge on the slumped Dimitrov. Twelve moths earlier the Bulgarian had lost a five-set heartbreaker in the semifinals to Rafael Nadal on this court, and he had lost to Kyrgios in Brisbane two weeks earlier. Was a repeat of both of those losses around the corner?
Over the next five points, Dimitrov gave us our answer, and it was a resounding no. In the process, he showed off all of his athletic gifts, and why they’ve taken him to No. 3 in the world.
At 3-3, he sprinted across the court to his right to track down a forehand, then sprinted all the way across the court to his left to track down a seemingly ungettable backhand, eventually forcing Kyrgios into an error. At 4-3, Dimitrov backpedaled to hit a forehand from outside the doubles alley; after giving up so much court, he had to produce a winner, and he did, in the most difficult way possible, by lifting the ball over the high part of the net and dropping it into the near corner. At 5-3, Dimitrov knocked off a high forehand volley for a winner. And at 6-4, he topped it off with the pièce de résistance, a full-stretch forehand that he somehow managed to rip back crosscourt, and past a charging Kyrgios, for another winner.