{"id":900209,"date":"2026-09-21T15:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T15:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/900209\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T15:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T15:16:09","slug":"dimitrov-part-of-me-left-with-roger-and-rafa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/900209\/","title":{"rendered":"Dimitrov: Part of Me Left with Roger and Rafa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        Daily Fuzz<\/p>\n<p class=\"tn-article-dek\">Grigor Dimitrov shares why life on the ATP Tour is dramatically different these days.<\/p>\n<p>Richard PagliaroSeptember 21, 20262 minute read<\/p>\n<p>By Richard Pagliaro | Monday, September 21, 2026<br \/>Photo credit:\u00a0Matthew Calvis<\/p>\n<p>Grigor Dimitrov is feeling physically healthy but confesses mental fragmentation with the passing of the Big 4 era.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spilxperten.com\/tennis\/aerlig-dimitrov-afsloerer-samtale-med-djokovic\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.spilxperten.com\/tennis\/aerlig-dimitrov-afsloerer-samtale-med-djokovic\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Nicholas Albeck of SpilXperten<\/a> at Davis Cup last weekend, former ATP Finals champion Dimitrov said life on the ATP Tour is simply not the same with the retirements of Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal. <\/p>\n<p>The 35-year-old Dimitrov shared a conversation he recently had with Grand Slam king Novak Djokovic in which the Bulgarian said the Big 4 era was the most challenging period of his career and conceded aging on the Tour \u201csucks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel the same as Novak. A part of me left with Roger and Rafa. Absolutely,\u201d Dimitrov told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spilxperten.com\/tennis\/aerlig-dimitrov-afsloerer-samtale-med-djokovic\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Nicholas Albeck of SpilXperten<\/a>. \u201cWe actually had that talk with Novak, where we talked about the challenges and the obstacles back in the day, you know that era of tennis\u2026 <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithout disrespecting any players, that era will always be the most challenging that I have ever had to face.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was not only the chaser, but I was trying to conquer the most massive players all the time. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to fulfill the older you get. It sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nine of the world\u2019s Top 16-ranked men are age 25 or younger.<\/p>\n<p>Former world No. 3 Dimitrov said the \u201csad\u201d truth is he feels he\u2019s aged out of friendships on Tour now as so many of his current opponents are from a younger generation he doesn\u2019t really know.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll be honest with you now. The past years I have kind of distanced myself from the ATP Tour,\u201d Dimitrov said. \u201cOf course, I am on the Tour, but I have distanced myself from keeping up with certain trends or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy life has always just been about tennis. In a way, age is just a number, but in our sport the gap increases a lot. You can definitely see that, and it`s not only on the court things have changed. It is also just about interactions. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don`t even know everyone on the Tour now. We can laugh about it, but it`s a bit sad.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daily Fuzz Grigor Dimitrov shares why life on the ATP Tour is dramatically different these days. Richard PagliaroSeptember&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-900209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}