{"id":523338,"date":"2026-07-03T13:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/523338\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T13:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:11:10","slug":"wimbledon-2026-all-heart-from-dimitrov-roland-garros-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/523338\/","title":{"rendered":"Wimbledon 2026: All heart from Dimitrov – Roland-Garros 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘I had lots of flashbacks, it was just a very uncomfortable feeling’<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old Bulgarian was in what can best be described as a flow state at the All England Club last year, leading eventual champion Jannik Sinner<\/a> by two sets to love and playing some breathtaking tennis that once carried him to the No.3 spot in the world.<\/p>\n

But disaster struck halfway through the third set as he tore his pectoral muscle after hitting a serve, and just like that, the match came to a premature end and a rehabilitation journey began.<\/p>\n

No stranger to injury, Dimitrov knows what it takes to overcome a physical issue, but the mental battle these past 12 months was far greater than any physical pain he had endured.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was frightened of the thought of having to come back on the court again and start hitting,” Dimitrov told reporters<\/a> ahead of his Wimbledon opener.<\/p>\n

“I’m not going to lie, my first hits, even practices were extremely difficult for me mentally to not only swing through, but I had lots of flashbacks, and it was just a very, very uncomfortable feeling. But I knew I had to work a lot on it, and I think not a mistake, but something that I think I could have done a little bit better is I didn’t give myself the chance to process what happened, and it hit me later, months later.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dimitrov recalls crying for two hours after that match against Sinner before he went straight to the hospital and began the rehab process.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t enough time to fully comprehend what had happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of a sudden, you start tossing the ball, and I had the flashback. I was like, ‘Oh, if I hit it hard…’ It’s just very weird inner chatter that I think was not healthy enough. It lingered for a while and I think it truly bothered me,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘I had lots of flashbacks, it was just a very uncomfortable feeling’ The 35-year-old Bulgarian was in what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-523338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}